“THAT’S THE WAY IT WAS”: ORAL HISTORIES OF WOMEN FROM
THE EARLY DAYS OF BRIERCREST COLLEGE AND SEMINARY
Colleen Taylor
A thesis presented in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts
Briercrest Seminary
April 2007
i
SIGNATURE SHEET FOR THE THESIS
I certify that I have read and am willing to sponsor this thesis submitted by Colleen
Taylor. In my opinion, it conforms to acceptable standards and is fully adequate in scope
and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts at Briercrest Seminary.
______________________________________
(date)
___________________________________________
Dr. Dwayne Uglem, Ed.D.
First Reader
I certify that I have read this thesis and in my opinion it conforms to acceptable
standards for a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts at Briercrest Seminary.
______________________________________
(date)
___________________________________________
Dr. Peter Engle, Ph.D.
Second Reader
Abstract of a thesis presented to Briercrest Seminary
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts
“THAT’S THE WAY IT WAS”: ORAL HISTORIES OF WOMEN FROM
THE EARLY DAYS OF BRIERCREST COLLEGE AND SEMINARY
by
Colleen Taylor
April 2007
Significant material has been published on the founding and growth of Briercrest
Bible Institute, yet most books and articles feature roles played by men, with
comparatively little attention to the women involved. In this thesis I ask the question,
"What were the experiences of women in the early days of Briercrest College and
Seminary?" then take an oral history approach to find answers. Oral history searches out
lived experiences not necessarily found in standard historical documents, gathered
through deep conversations about significant events and ideas. Scholar Linda Shopes
suggests understanding it “as a self-conscious, disciplined conversation between two
people about some aspect of the past considered by them to be of historical significance
and intentionally recorded for the record.”1 This thesis presents four autobiographical
Linda Shopes, “What is Oral History?” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web [cours online]
[cited 3 March 2007]. Available from http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html.
1
iv
narratives that arose from such conversations with five women who were involved in
Briercrest prior to 1960.
Chapter one introduces my own background and process for choosing this topic.
Chapter two surveys an interdisciplinary cross-section of literature about Briercrest,
women’s history and psychology, Mennonite history, and delimits the epoch from WWI
through the appearance of feminism. Chapter three explains oral history as discipline
and method, exploring the researcher’s role. Chapter four presents the results: the
women’s narratives. Chapter five highlights themes, demonstrates preliminary analysis,
discusses what I have learned, suggests further research and practical applications, and
asserts the value of the research.
In the founding of a school that grew into a town, women were usually outside the
classrooms and offices, yet they had immeasurable influence, especially in the wider
community. In fact, it seems their particular roles provided necessary balance in
establishing the new place.
This thesis is for the women of Briercrest College and Seminary—past, present, and
future,
particularly those women who have entrusted me with their stories:
Jean Rhode Mahn
Esther Edwards
Selma Penner
Irene Fender
Lillian Diggins
My story is important not because it is mine, God knows,
but because if I tell it anything like right,
the chances are you will recognize
that in many ways it is also yours.
Maybe nothing is more important than
that we keep track,
you and I, of these stories
of who we are
and where we have come from
and the people we have met along the way
because it is precisely through these stories
in all their particularity,
as I have long believed and often said,
that God makes himself known to each of us
most powerfully and personally.
If this is true, it means
that to lose track of our stories
is to be profoundly impoverished
not only humanly but also spiritually.
Frederick Buechner in Telling Secrets, p. 30.
Poetic line breaks mine.
I am a poetess,
and one day I will take my place
among the grandmothers and wise women.
I am a poetess:
between the silences
I hear stories and find the words to speak
Colleen Taylor, “Poetess,”
1998.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... x
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1
My Background ........................................................................................................... 2
Funerals ......................................................................................................................... 3
Job Description ............................................................................................................ 4
Project Ideas ................................................................................................................. 4
2. LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................................ 6
Interdisciplinary.......................................................................................................... 6
Primary Sources: Literature About Briercrest .................................................... 6
Silent and Hidden Women ...................................................................................... 9
Mennonite Connection ............................................................................................12
Historical Setting ...................................................................................................... 14
3. METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES ............................................................18
The Discipline of Oral History ...............................................................................18
The Participants ........................................................................................................ 23
Collaborating ............................................................................................................. 25
Interview Conversations ........................................................................................ 26
Transcribing ............................................................................................................... 26
Editing.......................................................................................................................... 27
Corroborating and Ethical Considerations ....................................................... 29
Analyzing ..................................................................................................................... 31
The Researcher’s Self ............................................................................................... 32
4. PARTICIPANTS’ ORAL HISTORY NARRATIVES ....................................... 36
Mrs. Jean Rhode Mahn (nee Whittaker) .......................................................... 36
Esther Edwards and Selma Penner ...................................................................... 55
Irene Fender ............................................................................................................... 78
Lillian Diggins ............................................................................................................ 87
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ................................................................ 110
Preface ......................................................................................................................... 110
Jean Rhode Mahn (nee Whittaker) ....................................................................111
Esther Edwards ........................................................................................................ 115
Selma Penner ............................................................................................................. 117
Irene Fender .............................................................................................................. 118
Lillian Diggins .......................................................................................................... 120
Voice ........................................................................................................................... 122
Reflection on the Method .................................................................................... 127
Recommendations .................................................................................................. 130
Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 132
Appendix
A. SAMPLE PARTICIPANT LETTER.....................................................................137
B. STATEMENTS OF RELEASE .............................................................................. 139
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 145
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So many people deserve my gratitude.
Mom and Dad, for giving me space to finish this thesis this year. Thank you for your
interest and input in this project, though you have sometimes been mystified by it.
Michelle, my “quasi-roommate,” for many quiet, intense conversations, solving the
problems of the world. Kim and Kathleen—interns, colleagues, friends—who have cared
and contributed so much for women and the community at Caronport, and have cared so
well for me. “The Bengal Babes” who worked enthusiastically for women in Caronport,
enjoying one another in the process. Dan, Penny and Emily: prayer warriors, burden
bearers, and friends. The 6:30 a.m. reading group—for the fellowship of women. Other
colleagues and friends who have encouraged and cheered me on: Carol, Brita, Christie,
Cristy, Amy, Rachel, and more. Carla, for encouragement and excellent proof-reading.
Glenn Runnalls, for the mandate to “speak intelligently and broadly to women’s
issues” and the latitude to act for the same. Barbara Neville who challenged me to finish
this degree and gave me the idea for doing these interviews. Marilynn Zink, for
recommending women to interview and, more indirectly, for your investments in
Briercrest’s history.
Students I have been privileged to mentor and supervise, both young women and
men, for sharpening and refreshing me, and for becoming friends: Dale, Anna, Hannah D.,
Hannah S., Masako, Robin, Larissa, Kevin, Greg, Phil, Nicole, Rachel, Maria, Joel, David
T., David R., Erin, Mary, Kelly, Jay and Amy, Laura, and so many others.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
While much has been written on the history of Briercrest College and Seminary 1 and
the men involved in its founding, the stories and voices of their wives and female colaborers have more rarely been heard. This thesis explores the experiences and
contributions of women at Briercrest, particularly in the first twenty-five years after its
founding. Oral history narratives will begin to reveal what life was like for women in the
early days of the institution, providing insights regarding the formal and informal
contributions of women in establishing and educating at these schools. The participants
in this thesis were Jean (Whittaker) Mahn, Esther Edwards, Selma Penner, Irene Fender,
and Lillian Diggins.
This study will hold interest for historians of women’s studies, plains research, and
religious education, particularly the Bible college movement. It should also interest
administrators who wonder how to involve women in leadership and who want to better
understand attitudes of and towards women. The research will find an immediate
audience among alumni, associates and their spouses, and students.
This highly original research has great potential for gaining a broader and deeper
understanding of our college and the people who helped to establish it. While the
1 In the time period examined by this thesis, the school’s name was Briercrest Bible Institute. The
present name is Briercrest College and Seminary, which also covers a third entity: Caronport High School.
For this thesis, when referring to the institution as a whole, I will simply use Briercrest, though context
will dictate the use of the full name, former names, or other terms such “the college,” “the school,” or “the
schools.”
1
research may not directly influence theory or policy, its first significance is “for its
detailed description of life circumstances that express particular social issues . . . [and] to
illuminate the lived experiences of interest by providing rich description.” 2 In drawing
out and telling the stories of women who were involved in the first years of Briercrest,
our institutional narrative will thicken, and our understanding of our past—and
present—will be enlightened and enriched.
This research is undertaken lest women from the early days of Briercrest disappear.
Given the dearth of women’s stories and voices, one question drives this thesis: What
were the experiences of women in the early days of Briercrest? Other questions may be
interesting (i.e., How were women's experiences different from men's? and what were
the women's perceptions, feelings, and attitudes about their experiences?); however, the
goal of this project is to create a descriptive body of work, reserving in-depth analysis for
later research. Mary Belenky writes, “The stories of the women drew us back into a kind
of knowing that had too often been silenced by the institutions in which we grew up and
of which we were a part. In the end we found that, in our attempt to bring forward the
ordinary voice, that voice had educated us.” 3 I believe that we can discover wisdom
previously undetected.
My Background
In 1998, my final project for an MCS at Regent College was an arts thesis in which I
wrote songs and poems, presenting them in a concert. The theme was “Finding a Voice,”
Catherine Marshall and Gretchen B. Rossman, Designing Qualitative Research, 3rd edition (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1999), 37.
2
Mary Field Belenky et al., Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York,
NY: Basic Books, 1996), 20.
3
and it explored three dimensions: finding one’s own voice, giving voice to the voiceless,
and hearing God’s voice. One of the lyrics has these words: “I am a poetess / And one day
I will take my place / Among the grandmothers and wise women. / I am a poetess /
Between the silences / I hear stories and find the words to speak.” Those lines feel like a
prophetic word that is now being fulfilled. Certainly with this thesis I have taken my
place among grandmothers and wise women and have heard stories for which I am
finding the words to speak.
A second component in the arts thesis was 30-page academic paper on a related
subject. I researched the poetry of three Mennonite women, spending significant time in
the Columbia Bible College library in Abbotsford, B.C., pouring over literature about
Mennonite women and their history. Little did I know that this would lay a strong
foundation for future research. Interestingly, an article by Julia Kasdorf, published four
years prior to my Regent thesis, draws an essential connection between oral history and
the poetry of Mennonite women.4
Funerals
Within the space of one year we buried the wives of two former presidents: Joanne
Barkman and Inger Hildebrand. Attending these funerals stirred a desire in me to pursue
some kind of research about women at Briercrest. I stood with the honour guards
inspired by their lives, yet wondering, how truly representative were they of women at
Briercrest?
Julia Kasdorf, “‘We Weren’t Always Plain’: Poetry by Women of Mennonite Backgrounds,” in
Strangers at Home, ed. Kimberly D. Schmidt, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Steven D. Reschly (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 312-338.
4
Job Description
My concern for women at Briercrest intensified as my work responsibilities changed
and increased. In 2002, I moved from the teaching faculty to Student Development as
Associate Dean of Students. My supervisor, Glenn Runnalls, wrote into my job
description that I was to “speak intelligently and broadly to women’s issues,” a heavy yet
inspiring mantle. As I surveyed the schools and the village of Caronport, seeking partners
on behalf of women, I wondered how our community had gotten to be the way it was.
Project Ideas
I began to sort through possible project ideas, first considering a project on
generativity, comparing women’s self-in-relation theories with male concepts of
autonomous self, intending to use Erickson’s stages of human development to evaluate
gendered ideas about women’s potential to make generative contributions to
institutions. Then I wanted to research beliefs about reasons for educating women,
possibly through surveys and quantitative interviews. Both ideas are still compelling, but
premature. We need to understand our origins first.
My next idea was an historical question: What informal contributions to education
have women made at Briercrest through the decades? Barbara Neville, an adjunct faculty
member, knew what I was wrestling with. When she heard that I was going to B.C. in
late October 2004, she urged me to interview Henry Hildebrand before it was too late.
That got me thinking about interviewing women, too, so I called Marilyn Zink for
referrals, and set up interviews with four women before I even knew what I was looking
for! I had not yet written a thesis proposal, never mind getting it approved, and I did not
know my discipline. I was going on hunches, seeking conversations. I just wanted to talk
with these women.
Early into the interviews, I realized that “informal contributions” was the wrong
question. Men’s and women’s lives were apparently so separate that the women often
had little or no contact with students. Generally women had supportive roles as stay-athome wives, and sometimes as secretaries or other support staff. The better question was
to explore what life was like for women in their own voices, guided not by predetermined themes but by the memories and values of the women themselves.
Thus I have settled on an interdisciplinary thesis with a strong historical angle. We
need to know the stories before we can evaluate them. We need to learn to listen—more
and better.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Interdisciplinary
The crux of this interdisciplinary thesis is the collection of oral histories from
women who were involved with Briercrest before 1960. The written process will draw
upon insights and methods from a range of disciplines: history, theology, psychology,
gender studies, sociology, and educational studies. The eclectic flavour of this literature
review results from an intentional decision to combine these disciplines for a fuller
understanding of women’s’ history, particularly that of the women of early Briercrest.
Primary Sources: Literature about Briercrest
Four significant publications focus on the founding and growth of Briercrest Bible
Institute: Miracle on the Prairies and Beacon on the Prairies by Bernard and Marjorie Palmer, In
His Loving Service by Henry Hildebrand, and Wind in the Wheatfields by Henry Budd.
Although women are given some mention, these books mainly document the men. For
example, Beacon on the Prairies is subtitled The Men God Uses In Building The Briercrest Bible
Institute. Bernard and Marjorie Palmer do have a chapter in Miracle on the Prairies titled
“The Dean of Women Speaks,” and Henry Hildebrand writes clearly of Annie (Copeland)
Hillson,1 and dedicates two further chapters of his memoirs to women (chapter 8, “The
1
Henry Hildebrand, In His Loving Service (Caronport, SK: Briercrest Bible College, 1985), 47-48.
Founding of a Bible School” and chapter 10, “Enter the Heroine”). Henry Budd’s pictorial
history is the most inclusive, giving fair coverage to women along with the men, in text
as well as pictures. However, all of these books are authored mainly by men2 and focus
on the institution, which was male-led with support staff comprised of some men and
many single women. In these writings we do not read of the school’s practice of not
employing married women, a significant factor excluding women from institutional
influence.3 The primary sources portray an idealized image of home life. Esther Edwards
and Selma Penner noted that Inger Hildebrand (“the Heroine”) was not necessarily
typical and was so exemplary as to be intimidating for other women.4 The day-to-day
experiences of married women are generally overlooked.
One exception, Treasures in Heaven by Beatrice Sundbo, is the story of a wife who,
with her husband, “saw four of her five children die.”5 The Sundbo family began serving
at Briercrest early after the school moved to Caronport.6 This little book is full of names
well known to those familiar with Briercrest history. Yet, Briercrest’s centrality is
geographical coincidence; this book is the memoir of a family’s grief, not a deliberately
historical record about the school.
Note: I have not investigated Marjorie Palmer’s role in co-authoring the two books with her
husband.
2
3
Esther Edwards, Selma Penner, Irene Fender, and Lillian Diggins all referred to this practice.
Esther Edwards and Selma Penner, interview by Colleen Taylor, tape recording, 2 November 2004,
Abbotsford, BC.
4
5
Beatrice Sundbo, Treasures in Heaven (Beaverlodge, AB: Horizon House Publishers, 1977), back cover.
Briercrest Bible Institute relocated to Caronport in 1946. Mrs. Sundbo supplies some dates, but no
years, not even of her children’s births. Dates here are estimates. Mrs. Sundbo writes, “Before Donald was
three months old, we moved from our home in Weldon, a small town in northern Saskatchewan, to the
Briercrest Bible Institute at Caronport Saskatchewan” (21). Donnie, who died of leukemia at age 4, was
second of the four children lost. Another clue to dates is in the acknowledgements: “The story of Donna,
Donald, and Baby Garth was first published, privately, in 1955.”
6
Another exception is Joyful Servants, a biography of David and Jeannie Hildebrand,
written by David’s father, Henry. The account documents mundane details of David’s
childhood such as colds, flues, earaches, and frequent visits to the hospital. There are also
references to David’s mother and Hildebrand family life in the towns of Briercrest and
Caronport.7 In this book, Henry Hildebrand is compiler as much as author, and many
other writers are women. This book focuses on people more than the institution, yet two
factors disqualify it from this study: (1) the women are not writing about themselves, and
(2) recollections prior to 1960 are few.
Three other Briercrest Seminary students have addressed women’s concerns. Krista
K. Rackham’s thesis examines Female Students in the Context of the Bible College: Retention as
Seen Through Motivation Factors,8 Jeanette Lee’s thesis looks at Factors which Influence and
Inhibit Women Becoming Faculty in AABC Schools,9 and Cheryl Busse’s thesis chronicles
Evangelical women in professional ministry in the 1990’s: examining internal dynamics.10 Valuable as
these studies are, they focus on academic or ministry-related concerns, not contributing
specifically to domestic knowledge regarding women at Briercrest. Methodologically,
Busse’s thesis is most instructive as a qualitative study using interviews to open up the
inner worlds of a sample of women, yet her goal was to discover common themes among
7
Henry Hildebrand, Joyful Servants (Caronport, SK: Briercrest Books, 2001), 5, 10-15
K. Rackham, Female Students in the Context of the Bible College: Retention as Seen Through Motivation
Factors (MA thesis, Briercrest Seminary, 1999).
8 Krista
Jeanette Lee, Factors Which Influence and Inhibit Women Becoming Faculty in AABC Schools (MA thesis,
Briercrest Seminary, 1998).
9
Cheryl Busse, Evangelical Women in Professional Ministry in the 1990’s: Examining Internal Dynamics (MA
thesis, Briercrest Seminary, 1998).
10
anonymous participants, while the goal of this thesis is to offer particular life stories of
named women.
Curiously, though women have received little attention in books about Briercrest’s
founding and history, early publications of Briercrest’s monthly newsletter, the Echo,
feature many writings by and about women. Prior to 1948, women are frequent
contributors, and the only editors named from June 1944 through December 1948 are
women: Jean Whittaker and Violet MacLaren. After 1948, women still write often, along
with men, but the voice of the Echo takes a different tone, with emphasis moving from
short original articles to reprinted sermons, articles and quotations, supplemented by
alumni news.
Silent and Hidden Women
The Palmers write at the end of Miracle on the Prairies: “Who can say what has been
done at Briercrest as a direct result of the silent, happy acceptance of the personal
sacrifices made by the wives and families of staff members that serving at such an
institution demands?”11 If published literature was the only witness, there would be no
argument. But, after interviews with only five women who lived and worked at
Briercrest prior to 1960, it is apparent that the wives and families may have been silent,
but not all were happy with or accepting of their situation. Jean Whittaker regrets the
frequency of giving up her bed for visiting students and Bible teachers during her teens,
and is still frustrated that she could not get a desired bicycle when her father gave a car
Bernard Palmer and Marjorie Palmer, Miracle on the Prairies (Caronport, SK: Briercrest Bible Institute,
n.d.), 190.
11
to the principal of the school.12 Esther Edwards tells of how her children wanted a pony.
Not being able to work for pay at Caronport,13 she took a clerical job in Moose Jaw and
rented a school-owned car (for two dollars a day) to get there.14
When I contacted my first interviewees by phone—Esther Edwards, Selma Penner,
Irene Fender, and Lillian Diggins—each one expressed doubt in her ability to contribute
much to the project. Esther Edwards was the first secretary to Henry Hildebrand and
later became the wife of Homer Edwards. When I told her that my research revealed a
lack of information regarding women, she responded, “We were supposed to be seen and
not heard, like children.”15
While this silence among women at Briercrest may be disquieting, it is not
surprising. Silence among women, as in lack of voice and agency, is a common theme in
psychological studies,16 women's history, and even church history. Women’s historian
Gerda Lerner writes, “Selective memory on the part of the men who recorded and
interpreted human history has had a devastating impact on women. . . . In effect, this
process . . . has taught both men and women that women did not contribute to the
making of civilization in their own right.”17 Some may feel that Lerner’s language is too
12 Jean (Whittaker) Mahn, interview by Colleen Taylor, tape recording, 4 June 2005, Athens, Ohio.
Jean learned about the car through reading Henry Hildebrand’s memoir, In His Loving Service.
13
Recall that it was standing practice not to employ married women, even those without children.
14
Esther Edwards and Selma Penner, interview.
15
Esther Edwards, conversation with Colleen Taylor, 26 Oct 2004, telephone.
16
Belenky, 17-18.
17
Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 205-206.
strong to be applied to Briercrest, yet these sorts of effects are evident.18 Even so, I do not
believe that the people of Briercrest ever actually believed that women's activities were
less valuable—just differently valued.
Briercrest’s founding principal, Dr. Henry Hildebrand, a Russian Mennonite, told me
in his 95th year that women and men "each have their place,"19 an idea clearly borne out in
his writings about his wife and his sermons: a woman's place—her highest calling—is in
the home, and this was her greatest contribution to the college.
Women’s segregation to the home, where they may have subsumed their identities
with their husbands and the wider institution, has even hidden women from each other,
often leaving them with few resources and supports, effectively devaluing their activities
and their very selves while their men have gone off to study and administrate. The
isolation can be unsettling and unhealthy. Women like Isabel Whittaker apparently bore
the pain and suffered in silence.20
It has always been obvious that men and women are different, though innumerable
theories speculate how. Carol Gilligan has been influential in changing the perception
that typical adult development is a linear progression from dependence to separation,
from relational, interpersonal-definition to individual self-definition.21 In the past two
decades or so, researchers such as Gilligan have begun to identify the linear model as a
decidedly male experience and to articulate women’s development as more relational and
18 I mean, specifically, the Briercrest of this thesis’ time period, though his also applies to the current
situation.
19
Dr. Henry Hildebrand, interview by Colleen Taylor, tape recording, 2 November 2004, Abbotsford,
20
Jean Mahn, interview.
BC.
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1993).
21
less autocentric. An important insight into women’s development and health is the “selfin-relation” theory: “the recognition that, for women, the primary experience of self is
relational, that is, the self is organized and developed in the context of important
relationships.”22 The average woman’s unique need for relationships with other women,
family, colleagues, community, etc., is widely acknowledged.
These are not just categories noticed by secular writers. Faith-based writers observe
women’s need for connection, and some, like Tucker and Liefeld, point out female
invisibility:
In many instances the role of women in the church has not been as noteworthy
as that of men. After all, it is mainly men who have preached, led church
councils, and written theology. But frequently women have been overlooked
even when they made outstanding contributions. “As so frequently happens in
the writing of history,” writes Patricia Hill, “the women have simply
disappeared.”23
This thesis will be undertaken lest women from the early days of Briercrest disappear.
Mennonite Connection
It is interesting to notice similarities between Briercrest’s origins and those of
“Mennonite Brethren Bible Schools in Western Canada”24 While neither the Briercrest
Gospel Assembly nor the Briercrest Bible Institute were explicitly denominational,
appointing Henry Hildebrand, a Russlander Mennonite, as the first pastor and principal
introduced a significantly Mennonite dynamic to the school.
22
Judith Jordan et al., Women’s Growth in Connection (New York: Guilford Press, 1991), 52.
23
Ruth Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 13.
Bruce Guenther, “‘Monuments to God’s Faithfulness’: Mennonite Brethren Bible Schools in
Western Canada, 1913-1960,” Direction (2001). Available from
http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1160.
24
Not only did the young principal have Mennonite background, the strength of MB
Bible schools was waning in other parts of Canada as MB students gravitated towards
non-denominational colleges. Bruce Guenther writes,
from the late 1930s onwards, Mennonite (not all MBs) students consistently
made up twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the student population at both
Prairie Bible Institute and Briercrest Bible Institute. Once established, it was
difficult to stop the flow of Mennonite students into transdenominational Bible
schools. Personal loyalties towards these institutions became entrenched and
sometimes lasted for several generations: financial resources and personal energy
were allocated away from local churches; satisfied alumni tended to recruit other
students.25
A cursory glance through Briercrest literature shows a visible Mennonite presence with
names like Penner, Froese, Friesen, Regehr, Martens, Sawatzky, and more.
While it is important to consider the broader evangelical and fundamentalist milieu
of the day,26 Mennonite history provides insight into the social structure of the fledgling
community, especially as it concerns women. Extensive research has been done about
and by Mennonite women regarding their history, as evidenced Strangers at Home: Amish
and Mennonite Women in History, a collection of essays. In Julia Kasdorf ‘s essay, “We Were
Not Always Plain,” she writes,
History is a rich source for Mennonite writers because our group has
consistently relied on historical narratives to sustain a sectarian cultural and
religious identity . . . More than theological writings or church doctrine,
community and family stories have shaped a sense of Mennonite identity in
North America.27
25
Ibid.
26 Bruce D. Hindmarsh, “The Winnipeg Fundamentalist Network, 1910-1940: The Roots of
Transdenominational Evangelicalism in Manitoba and Saskatchewan,” Didaskalia [journal online]
(Otterburne, MB: Providence College and Seminary, Fall 1998) [cited 26 October 2004]. Available from
http://prov.ca/Didaskalia/Articles/fall1998.aspx.
27
Kasdorf, 317.
Of course, at a place like Briercrest, Mennonite characteristics are less distinctive, yet
still important influences. I have already done one thesis with a component on
Mennonite women and think it a compelling source for understanding Briercrest’s
underpinnings.28 Mennonite history will not dominate this thesis, but will definitely
inform it.
Historical Setting
The time period for this thesis spans from the early 1930s through 1960, from the
Great Depression to the advent of feminism. The Depression cultivated rugged, sacrificial
people, and it was during this time that the dream of opening a Bible school was
conceived and fulfilled.
Prior to the 1930s, education for women in Saskatchewan was promoted by The
Homemakers’ Clubs of Saskatchewan (established in 1911), “to promote the interests of
home and community.” 29
The Homemakers, which were patterned on the Women’s Institutes (WI) of
Ontario, were a part of the extension work of the University of Saskatchewan in
Adult education. . . . Through these affiliations several Saskatchewan women
made national and international connections which broadened their horizons.
Even more women had their lives enriched just by going to district conventions
or even better by attending the annual convention on the university campus.30
Around this time, Annie (Copeland) Hillson started teaching women’s Bible studies in
the town of Briercrest.31 Not only was there a hunger for knowledge, there was a hunger
28 Colleen
Taylor, “Finding a Voice,” tape recording (Vancouver, BC: Regent College arts thesis, April
1998).
29
Kathleen Storrie, ed., Women: Isolation and Bonding (Toronto: Methuen, 1987), 81.
30
Ibid.
31
Palmer, Miracle, 14-20. Hildebrand, In His Loving Service, 47-48.
for truth, as demonstrated by Isabel Whittaker who enrolled in Scofield Bible courses
from Moody College to check Annie Hillson’s teaching.32 As Homemakers had their
national and international horizons broadened through conventions, Christians in
Briercrest and surrounding areas were also having their own horizons broadened.33
What began as a women’s initiative grew to Bible conferences, then an
interdenominational church, and finally, in spite of economic hard times, to a college.
Today, Henry Hildebrand’s praises for the women who helped to found Briercrest
sound strange next to their limitations. He writes,
The saints at Briercrest were unique. . . . They were also unique in their
gender. Beginning with a Ladies’ Home Bible Study, the original assembly was
comprised mostly of women well-instructed in the Scriptures. The few men we
had did not avail themselves of the Home Bible Studies and so, in contrast with
the women, knew little of the Bible. Still they were to be my elders.34
It seems paradoxical to praise these women who were so well trained and who had taken
so much initiative, then bar them from leadership based on gender. In fact, Hildebrand
claims that the women were so “well instructed in the Word, the men could profitably
ask questions of them at home as to the deeper meaning of the Word.”35 What a reversal
of I Corinthians 14:33-35! In spite of the women’s maturity and proficiency, apparently all
the Briercrest believers shared the assumption that the men would lead and the women
would support. Tucker and Liefield would not be surprised by the Briercrest situation:
“Another pattern indicated by our research suggests that women often had significant
32
Palmer, Miracle, 19.
33
International influence came through prayer for and visits from missionaries.
34
H. Hildebrand, 57.
35
Ibid., 58.
leadership positions during the initial pioneering and development stages of a movement,
only to be replaced by men as the movement became more ‘respectable.’”36
For Briercrest, two great consecutive events were World War II (1939-1945) and the
move to Caronport (1946). During the war, men and women all pitched in to do what
they could for freedom. 37 Elaine Storkey observes how, after World War II, Americans
and Europeans tried “to put it behind them and plan for the future . . . to return to
normality.”38 Jeannie Hildebrand marks the end of the war as the beginnings of 1950s
suburbia, where “women were so relieved . . . because there had come within them such a
longing for security. . . . And what they wanted most in life was to return to normality
and to have love and home and family.”39 Then she locates soil for feminism in the
disillusionment that grew up among women in suburbia, and seeds of feminism in Betty
Freidan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, stating, “And she [Friedan] said, ‘Girls, it is time to
get out of your home and get into the real world.’”
That clear shift is the boundary line for this study. Jeannie Hildebrand seems to
assess gender issues as essentially emotional and faith-based: “We should know that if
we’re Christians . . . not a marriage or a family or a house or an acreage gives us
satisfaction. Only the Lord can give us satisfaction, no matter who we are.”40 Storkey,
also a Christian, takes a sociological view, seeing gender questions as a natural outcome
36
Tucker and Liefeld, 15.
37 Jeannie Hildebrand, “How It Came Together and Where It Went,” tape recording. (Caronport SK:
Pastor’s Conference—Ladies Time Out, March 14, 1989).
38 Elaine
Storkey, Origins of Difference, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 14.
39
J. Hildebrand, “How It Came Together.”
40
Ibid.
of rearranged roles during the World Wars.41 Even though America had experienced
emancipation, women’s suffrage, and the temperance movement (with campaigns often
led by women), the 1950s were not particularly self-conscious about gender issues or
history. There was an “absence of analysis” that was “curious.”42 This was no less true at
Briercrest. During the war years, Briercrest’s classes were chiefly comprised of women.
With the return of the servicemen, enrolment doubled and the school got on with the
work at Caronport. Women who took training headed for foreign missionary work,
settled into domestic life, or worked in largely supportive roles in the college.
This is the epoch from which our sample set comes: the period from World War I up
to the appearance of feminism. Our task is listening to the past, and our primary method
is oral history.43
41
Storkey, 14.
42
Ibid., 15.
43 Even though Irene Fender’s and Lillian Diggins’ presences at Briercrest overlap the 1960 boundary
line, we might expect their experiences to be less influenced by the fomentation of the ‘60s. Consider
Madeleine Albright’s comment: “My youngest daughter, Katie, was born in 1967, and by the time she
reached college there was a course on the sixties. She took it. . . . In many ways those of us who graduated
at the end of the fifties missed the sixties. While our younger brothers and sisters were doing their own
thing, we were doing our parents’ thing, starting careers and raising families.” Madame Secretary: A Memoir
(New York: Miramax Books, 2003), 61.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES
The Discipline of Oral History
Even though this thesis is interdisciplinary, the method for data collection is
singularly rooted in oral history. Linda Shopes calls oral history “a maddeningly
imprecise term” and suggests understanding it “as a self-conscious, disciplined
conversation between two people about some aspect of the past considered by them to
be of historical significance and intentionally recorded for the record.” 1 Through this
thesis I have generated “oral history memoirs,”2 or narratives, from conversations with
women who were involved in Briercrest College and Seminary in its early days, focusing
as much as possible on the first two and a half decades (1935-1960).
Oral history asks and answers questions about long-term memory and lived
experience, with the potential to uncover more than the basic facts of who, what, where,
and when, thus making it an appropriate method for asking the question, What were the
experiences of women in the early days of Briercrest? While artifacts such as letters and journals
and even recipe books could be helpful in pursuing this question, how much better to
talk to the women themselves? Marshall and Rossman concur:
1
Shopes, “What is Oral History?”
Baylor Institute for Oral History, “About Us,” Baylor Institute for Oral History [cited 12 May 2005].
Available from http://www.baylor.edu/oral%5Fhistory/index.php?id=23343.
2
18
For a study focusing on individuals' lived experience, the researcher could argue
that one cannot understand human actions without understanding the meaning
that participants attribute to those actions—their thoughts, feelings, beliefs,
values, and assumptive worlds; the researcher, therefore, needs to understand the
deeper perspectives captured through face-to-face interaction.3
While oral history also approaches questions about how and why as well as what, the
oral history interview goes beyond them, searching out nuances of lived experiences that
are not necessarily found in standard historical documents. Even autobiographies
(memoirs), though not history textbooks, have certain liabilities compared with oral
history: they are intentionally written, even calculated, and can give an official
perspective rather than a candid one. Because the oral history narrative arises out of a
more-or-less spontaneous conversation, it is potentially less formal and less selfconscious.
Of course, it is not always true that oral history interviews provide less formal
information. My conversation with Dr. Hildebrand was essentially a rehearsal of his
book; in fact, he often directed me back to his writing, saying, “Well, it’s in my book.” It
was nearly impossible to elicit any “new” or more “personal” anecdotes from him.
Everything he wanted to say was already in the written record.4 Jean Mahn also relied on
previously written documents. She was very organized with files of correspondence and
clippings, giving the impression that she had been collecting it for a researcher, yet she
was also more candid. For most of the women I talked to, this was their first time to
speak publicly about their early experiences at Briercrest, giving freshness and originality
to their stories.
3
Marshall and Rossman, 57
I have not used Dr. Hildebrand’s interview much in this thesis, partly because it was not very useful,
and partly because I was pursuing the previously unheard voices of women.
4
Unlike standard historiography based on written documents and material artifacts,
the primary source of oral history is the narrator, and the process of writing oral history
is interactive and creative, involving both narrator and researcher. Narrators can help us
to reinterpret what we may have misinterpreted in the written documents, or to
challenge popular opinion.5 Narrators also “help us create all of the histories that we still
do not have enough of . . . projects that would help fill the gaps.”6
Rather than engaging in thorough thematic analysis, I have aimed to let the data
speak from the participants’ narratives. Marshall and Rossman list life histories and
narrative inquiry as secondary methods;7 however, given the collaborative process of
working with the participants to create their life histories, the narratives generated here
can be considered as primary sources, that is, original documents.
Considering oral histories as primary documents can be problematic. Shopes warns,
“Oral history is not simply another source,” and using it that way overestimates its
reliability.8 The narratives gleaned through this thesis must be weighed against one other
and verified in comparison with other forms of historical documentation. “An interview
is inevitably an act of memory,” writes Shopes, “and while individual memories can be
more or less accurate, complete, or truthful, in fact interviews routinely include
5 Heather Fraser, “Doing Narrative Research,” Qualitative Social Work (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 2004).
6 Katrine Barber and Janice Dilg, “Documenting Women’s History: Using Oral History and the
Collaborative Process,” in Oregon Historical Quarterly (Winter 2002, v103, i4, p530) [journal online]. Infotrac
Expanded Academic ASAP [cited June 14, 2005]. Available at http://infotrac.galegroup.com/menu.
7
Marshall and Rossman, 120-123.
Shopes, “Interpreting Oral History,” in History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web [course
online] [cited 3 March 2007]. Available from
http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/interpreting.html.
8 Linda
inaccurate and imprecise information, if not outright falsehoods.”9 Inaccuracies include
names, numbers, and places, and imprecision can arise from collapsing two events into
one story.
Of course, careful oral historians are concerned with getting facts straight, but they
are more concerned with the larger context of the memories, “what might be termed
social memory.”10 Oral history is “not so much . . . an exercise in fact finding but . . . an
interpretive event, as the narrator compresses years of living into a few hours of talk,
selecting, consciously and unconsciously, what to say and how to say it.” 11 Often the
narratives tell the same stories two or three times, but with discrepancies. This
demonstrates the individual and perspectival nature of memory and, by extension, of all
history. The aim of this thesis is not to harmonize accounts and resolve discrepancies
(though I do give this some attention in chapter five), but to let these acts of memory be
witnessed for the first time through cohesive personal narratives (chapter four).
Harmonizing and resolving are later historiographical tasks and beyond the scope of this
research.
While Shopes admits the limitations of oral history as source material, the editors of
Rethinking Canada, Veronica Strong-Boag, Mona Gleason, and Adele Perry, make this bold
claim:
In order to recover the fullest possible account of the past, historians have
broadened their understanding of what constitutes evidence. . . . Whatever its
particular value, no single source gives a complete picture . . . nor is everything
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
we assemble on the past equally instructive or a fair representation of what
occurred. We need to judge both the material itself and its provenance.12
Strong-Boag, Gleason, and Perry are convinced that oral history enriches us by “bringing
women into the historical narrative” and that “oral history gives women the opportunity
to describe, and interpret in their own words, events in which they participated.” 13 They
remark, “Historians are heirs to a scholarly tradition that venerates the written and
either ignores the oral or denigrates it as ‘myth’ or, especially when spoken by women,
‘gossip’.”14 The concerns of women may be commonplace, but that does not make them
insignificant. There can be a fine line between gossip and oral tradition, but oral history
is far from merely “telling tales.”
Tucker and Liefeld recommend studying women in church history to understand
how they were prominent and influential in the church “even though they were
systematically denied positions of authority.”15 That was 1987 and at that point in
women’s history, prominence and influence were useful concepts in securing a woman’s
place in history alongside men. While there is still much to study in the lives of powerful
woman, that point has been made many times over. The goal of this thesis is to raise
interest in all areas of women's lives, thus gaining a fuller understanding of life in the
early days of Briercrest from women who, though they may not have been leaders,
certainly have been an indispensable part of the fabric of living in the towns of Briercrest
and Caronport.
Veronica Strong-Boag, Mona Gleason, and Adele Perry, eds. Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s
History (Oxford University Press: Don Mills, ON, 2002), 220.
12
13
Ibid., 6.
14
Ibid., 220.
15
Tucker and Liefeld, 14.
Oral historians do well to remember that memory “is slippery and malleable and can
be manipulated in a way that is similar to but also different from the written record.” 16
For this reason, Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History hosted an interdisciplinary
conference on memory and history, bringing together oral historians with cognitive
psychologists. Oral historians are concerned with long-term memory, cognitive
psychologists with short-term memory, and both with individual memory. The Baylor
conference wanted to explore ways in which “even in memory the individual and the
community are more closely intertwined than traditionally perceived.”17 I believe looking
behind the scenes of life at early Briercrest will provide insights for understanding
Caronport’s current social fabric, data which has, until now, not been gathered, much
less received scholarly attention.
The Participants
The women who participated in interviews are Jean Rhode Mahn (nee Whittaker),
Esther Edwards, Selma Penner, Irene Fender, and Lillian Diggins. Though there are many
other women whose stories could and probably should be gathered, limiting the sample
set to five women is consistent with the nature of qualitative research. Qualitative
research sometimes needs as few as one or two subjects, since the researcher spends so
much time with the individual participants18 through interviewing, transcribing, and
corroborating (aka triangulating) to verify information.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., xii.
18 Bev
McIntyre, Telephone conversation with Colleen Taylor, 13 June 2005.
My first interviews were landed opportunistically.19 I had just realized that I wanted
to research the history of women at Briercrest and was about to take a trip to Vancouver.
Barbara Neville said, “You’d better go interview Henry Hildebrand while you can,” which
led to looking for other leads in BC. Marilyn Zink directed me to Esther, Selma, Irene,
and Lillian. I quickly brushed up on my Briercrest history and did some background
research in oral history and interviewing strategies, setting my goals for these interviews
to establish rapport and simply have a conversation about the women’s memories. This
decision was based on a paper by Rita Berry in which she lists “the informal
conversational interview” as one option for in-depth interviewing: “This type of
interview resembles a chat, during which the informants may sometimes forget that they
are being interviewed. Most of the questions asked will flow from the immediate
context.”20 Heather Fraser stresses “taking the time to ‘really’ listen” when doing
narrative research, noting that certain types of questions may be useful, but “little energy
is usually expended in trying to create the ‘right’ questions because it is more important
to concentrate on” the narrator.21 With this mindset, I had delightful “chats” with my
interviewees.
Since I was going to BC’s Lower Mainland anyhow, there was little to lose in
meeting with these women. At the same time, acting so spontaneously was a huge risk. I
feared finding out that these were weak interviews requiring extensive follow-up, so
avoided transcription for quite some time. Eventually I got down to the work and was
19
Marshall and Rossman, 78.
Rita S. Y. Berry, “Collecting Data By In-Depth Interviewing” [cited 28 Oct 2004]. Available from
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000001172.htm.
20
21
Fraser, 185.
pleasantly surprised with the quality, which Marshall and Rossman would attribute to
intuition as an initial part of conceptualizing. Intuition can be substantiated as the
researcher “locates it in a tradition of theory and related research.” 22 Though the
interviews could have been tighter had I been more informed about both Briercrest and
oral history techniques, the transcripts have yielded more than enough valuable
information for this project.
Collaborating
Generating oral history memoirs is a collaborative process between the researcher
who interviews and the participants who narrate their life stories. Collaboration, writes
Katrine Barber, “is based on the narrator’s trust that the interviewer will listen carefully
and not intentionally misinterpret what was said and that the interviewer will care
about and for the narrator’s history. It consists of a nuanced and complicated
relationship.”23 I have seen for myself the need for this trust-building and care-giving.
Receiving hospitality from each of my narrators was important as part of the whole
context: coffee, meals, even an overnight stay. I was not just pursuing information, I was
pursuing a relationship and, as a researcher who was also an alumna and employee at
Briercrest, I provided a tangible link to each narrator’s past.
22
Marshall and Rossman, 43
23
Barber and Dilg.
Interview Conversations
The oral historian is primarily a listener, an active, not passive, role in collecting
“society’s otherwise unorganized memories.”24 Thus, the first listening task in oral
history is gathering data via in-depth interviewing. Aside from collecting stories,
Heather Fraser suggests that analysis begins at this point.25 While conversing with a
participant, the interviewer must “listen” with her whole being. “Registering emotions
stimulated through the discussions, we reflect on the body language used and the
feelings depicted and/or described. We do this because they often provide clues about
the meanings made.”26 Journal keeping and listening to the audiotapes are two useful
tools here, and I used both of them to process my experiences with the women.
My interviewees were fully aware of the tape recorder sitting between us as it had to
be set up and tested before we could commence interviewing. The ladies tended to relax
and enjoy reminiscing, though occasionally one would make a controversial statement
and anxiously ask, “Is that on the tape?” I assured them that nothing would remain in the
final analysis without their permission.
Transcribing
Having done the initial interviews, the next step was to transcribe the tapes. With
an old cassette Dictaphone and a typing speed of seventy words per minute, I transcribed
the interviews myself. Though time consuming, this was important for reliving the
24 Donald A. Ritchie, “Foreword,” Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience,
(Waco, TX: Baylor University Institute for Oral History, 1994), v. Available at
http://www3.baylor.edu/Oral_History/ritchie%20foreword.pdf.
25
Fraser, 186. Fraser’s essay discusses other narrative research methods besides interviewing.
26 Ibid.
interview experience. I would have benefited also from listening to each interview once
or twice more, but after several hours transcribing each interview, I had little motivation
to listen to them again. That said, I did not treat transcription as a mere task to
accomplish but as a reflective process, giving myself ample time throughout to stop,
ponder, and write about the interactions between myself and the participants.
For the most part, I avoided “cleaning up” the speech at this stage, including
colloquialisms and stylistic speech, admitting some speech tags such as “um” and “uh,”
etc., while omitting others.27 Preserving a transcript as a verbatim record of the interview
brings high accuracy to data collection.28
Editing
"Between the oral interview and the written manuscript is a long, meandering
journey in which a narrative is crafted," writes Rebecca Jones.29 This has been my
journey, crafting the transcripts into autobiography with first person voicing,
considering questions about how to organize and provide connective tissue.
I drafted each narrative immediately after transcription. This sort of research calls
for a certain amount of summation and interpretation, but I maintained that these oral
history narratives should largely stand on their own. Donald Ritchie highlights the oral
historian’s active role in collecting “society’s otherwise unorganized memories”:
The ‘organized memory’ traditionally entrusted to historians reflects how a whole
society or its component groups recall and interpret their past. By contrast, oral
historians work with individual memories, which can range from sharp to dim . . .
27
The transcriptions include references to pauses and various utterances that come with speaking.
28 High
accuracy in these transcripts is not equivalent to high accuracy in data.
Rebecca Jones, "Blended Voices: Crafting a Narrative from Oral History Interviews," in The Oral History
Review (Vol. 31, No. 1): 23-42.
29
[and] concede that dealing with memory is a risky business, but it is inescapably
the interviewer’s business. . . . the reliability of oral history is bound to the
reliability of memory.30
Entrusted with such precious memories, editing is a means to organize them.
I struggled mightily with the question of authentic voice. Writing descriptively in
third person is relatively easy and safe. Somehow, trying to convey the stories in first
person felt presumptuous, especially in the case of two participants in the same
interview: (1) Esther and Selma, (2) Lillian and Gordon. Then Rebecca Jones came to my
rescue with this paragraph:
The dilemma for the writer of a published text is to what degree is it appropriate
to edit the words of the narrator? . . . While faithfully reproducing the spoken
word in a textual form may be desirable in the transcribing phase, and
appropriate for certain oral histories that are not published or are aimed at an
academic audience or a particular cultural group, I argue that this is
inappropriate for interviews or extracts that are published for general readership.
When publishing for a general audience, extensive editing is necessary to create a
document that is not only readable and accessible, but also conveys the flavor of
the experiences.31
So I pursued the first-person voice, effectively making each narrative autobiographical,
then set the narratives in context by including a short, italicized, third-person preface for
each.
In the two-participant interviews, stories were so intertwined that it is hard to
separate the voices. In the case of Lillian and Gordon Diggins, I wrote the narrative from
her perspective, retaining one small section of dialogue about their courtship. I usually
integrated Gordon’s comments into Lillian’s voice and, where Gordon’s comments are
interesting or helpful but impossible or unnecessary to integrate, I placed them in the
30
Ritchie.
31
Rebecca Jones, 25-26
footnotes.32 In the case of Esther Edwards and Selma Penner, I decided that the dialogue
between old friends should be maintained, with some integration for narrative flow.
Firmly committed to an autobiographical approach, I completely removed my own
questions and statements, except in rare footnotes.
Corroborating and Ethical Considerations
After drafting the transcript’s raw material into a reasonable personal narrative, I
mailed the transcript and narrative to each participant, along with a letter explaining the
project, a consent form, and a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE). Each woman
corrected, added, and deleted as desired, signed a consent form,33 and returned the
documents to me in the SASE. I did some follow-up with phone calls to clarify.34 Turnaround time for each woman was excellent, except for Irene Fender who, having become
quite forgetful, needed help from Lillian Diggins to complete her part.35 I had hoped to
corroborate and collect the signatures in person, but had to settle for Canada Post.
Unfortunately, I realized that my consent forms came later than necessary in the
process. Typically interviewees sign an agreement at the beginning of the project, either just
32
In the future, someone may want to take a different approach to my transcripts.
33
Marshall and Rossman discuss ethics and give examples of consent forms, 89-101.
34 For example, how did they deal with the challenges of adapting to their new environments? How
did they feel about the new territory they had entered? What were their concerns on a variety of levels:
practical, emotional, social, spiritual? Who did they live with and work with? How did they relate to their
husbands and children? What were their hopes and dreams?
Irene Fender appears to be experiencing age-related memory loss. In our telephone conversation I
quizzed her to be sure that her confusion would not disqualify her from the project. Though she never
retained my name in her short or long-term memory, given some prompts, she could recall the project.
Satisfied that she still had enough comprehension to finish, I enlisted Lillian Diggins to visit Irene and help
with the final documentation. Fortunately, Lillian had email, so rather than mailing the narrative and
consent form, I could send it electronically.
35
before or just after the interview.36 I wish I had known this at the start. The possibility of
a participant becoming incapacitated or dying before the corroboration phase is one
reason to obtain permission at the interview. Obtaining consent at the interview also
frees the researcher to use the interview at her discretion. Instead, I waited until the
corroboration phase two years later. As a result, I had to explain much to my participants
to refresh them.
Also unfortunate, my Statements of Consent/Release are too detailed, delineating
permissions and limitations in confusing ways. They are also inconsistent, with
drastically different content for Lillian and Gordon Diggins than for the other
participants. These things need not disqualify the data, though they do complicate future
research beyond this thesis. They should be much simpler and clearer, perhaps
accompanied by a Code of Ethics statement outlining rights and principles of conduct
for the research.
I have included scanned copies of each signed release form as an Appendix. I have
also included a sample letter introducing the project to my participants.
Corroboration is a generous, often illuminating gesture, though not required. I
invited my women in with trepidation that seeing their words in print would produce
excess caution. The women used great discretion, rewriting or omitting statements that
seemed derogatory, yet I was surprised and relieved to see how much honesty remained.
While cumbersome, the practice of checking with the narrator increases the integrity of
the final texts.
Marsha MacDowell, “Collecting Stories: The Oral Interview in Research” in The Spoken Word
[database online][cited 20 August 2007]. Available from
http://historicalvoices.org/spokenword/resources/collectingohistory.php.
36
Katrine Barber writes of feeling an ethical obligation to her narrator, Barbara
Mackenzie “and, by extension, [to] her family” to produce
something useful to her and to them. . . . I believe that this decision had an
important role in my continued growth as an historian. I have come to regard
my scholarly work as including a responsibility to serve my community (defined
broadly), and it is in this believe that Barbara Mackenzie has provided me with
a fine model.37
Barber’s struggle resonates with me. At times I have wanted to engineer this project to
make certain points, yet my responsibility to the narrators means I must attend to them,
not my own preconceptions or agendas.
Analyzing
While waiting for narrator edits and approval, I carried on with other tasks such as
content analysis,38 comparison, interpretation, and writing, making adjustments as
narrators returned their feedback. In chapter five, I combine a fairly straightforward
identification of themes with more nuanced interpretation of the text.
Though it may not be possible to generalize for all Briercrest women from the lives
of these individuals, it is possible to extrapolate themes and patterns and to make
recommendations for further research.39 Fraser says the process of analysis begins at the
first conversation and continues through to writing narratives.40 The editing/writing
process itself is an analytical and interpretive event.
37
Barber.
38 “Qualitative
Social Science Research Methodology” [June 13, 2005]. Available from
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/308/308lect09.htm. Cf. Marshall and Rossman, 117.
39
McIntyre.
40 Note: for Fraser, narratives are academic reports, lifting segments and selecting themes directly
from the transcripts, then summarizing and evaluating them line-by-line. For my purposes, narratives are
autobiographical accounts based on interview transcripts, with themes then mined from the narratives.
My process removes thematic evaluation one step further away from the original encounter.
Analysis does not end once the narratives are crafted. It continues with comparing
and harmonizing the narratives (only preliminary in this thesis), and as each reader
approaches the text, bringing his or her knowledge, experiences, and presuppositions.
The Researcher’s Self
Though my exact words have been removed from or integrated into the narrative
texts, and though I have worked to maintain distinct voicing for each narrator, it would
be naïve to think I am completely absent from the text. I am not merely a bystander nor
merely a researcher. As an evangelical Christian woman and an employee and alumna of
Briercrest, I am joined to these women on many levels.
"Be candid,” advises James Key. “The [qualitative] researcher should not spend too
much time attempting to keep her/his own feelings and personal reactions out of the
study."41 In fact, Key claims that the researcher’s feelings may be relevant. At the same
time he warns against the temptation either to overestimate the value of one’s research
or, conversely, to lose one’s nerve and devalue and undermine it. The researcher is an
integral part of qualitative study.
When I talk with others about the history of women at Briercrest, I bring my own
understanding of the place, acquired from 1985 through the present as student and staff
member in all three schools. I come as a single woman who has pursued education and
career yet desires to marry and have children; one who has lived internationally and hope
to do so again; who has loved words and writing since childhood; who feels a vocational
pull to listen to and record other people’s stories; who has benefited from formal and
James Key, “Qualitative Research,” Research Design in Occupational Education [database online].
(Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma State University) [cited 13 June 2005]. Available from
http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5980a/5980/newpage21.htm.
41
informal mentoring during my college years, and has tried as an administrator to provide
similar connections for college women. With a deep concern for ministry between
women, I have networked to help provide for the needs of women. Bringing all this and
much more to the research, do I need to set it aside to achieve some elusive objectivity?
David Goa insists that objectivity is impossible, especially if we seek meaning, not just
information. “Our capacity to speak deeply together requires us to open our selfunderstanding to their self-understanding. That is why we come away from such
conversations challenged, renewed and thinking.”42 This contrasts with typical research
views.
The standard method of oral history taught interviewers to set aside their
perspectives, concerns and ultimately their own being. I see the layers of
memory, tradition, place and experience that make up our identity as central to
our capacity to approach the other.43
So my experiences, my sense of place, and my whole self, become “the ground upon
which we may stand and must stand if we are to open to the other and have the other’s
world of meaning and being open to us.”44
Someone has suggested that as interviewer I am the primary instrument of research.
The term “instrument” reifies me. Am I instrument or participant? I do not come in some
static form, like my tape recorder, merely gathering data to organize and present later. I
must come as a participant, one human being meeting with another human being, open
to the possibility that we may be changed in the encounter. 45
David Goa, Working in the Fields of Meaning: Cultural Communities, Museums and the New Pluralism,
unpublished manuscript (received by email, 31 July 2007), 39.
42
43
Ibid., 46.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., 46-47.
As an alumna and a former employee, I consider myself an insider, with ongoing
links to Briercrest College and Seminary. I will not use this project as a soapbox, yet my
commitment to the extended community means I must serve the community by telling
these stories, courageous to let the “truth” speak, though at times it may be painful. As an
oral historian I stand in the gap, maintaining a “collective memory” (i.e., continuous
living contact with the past), reviving from or preventing regression into “historical
memory . . . ‘when social traditions are broken and living contact with the past has been
lost.” When a culture experiences historical memory “all that remains are fragments as
artifacts.” 46 It is possible that these narratives one day will be relegated to artifacts, but
for now I am providing an outlet for these women’s voices to maintain “living contact”
with our history.
Fraser advises that “in the process of pulling together threads of others’ stories, we
will be telling stories of our own. The participants’ stories intermingle with my own.”47
Final decisions about what to include, omit, add, and how to rearrange words and
phrases have been entirely mine. Throughout the process I have felt responsible to the
text, my audience, and my narrators.
Some researchers advocate preserving the exact words and, as possible, the rhythms
and accents of a narrator. Others argue that our responsibility is to make the narrator
“sound” as good as possible. William Zinnser comments, “All oral material needs a
certain amount of tidying for print; the ear makes leaps that the eye won't tolerate. . . .
Linda Sandino, “Oral Histories and Design: Objects and Subjects” in Journal of Design History. Vol. 19,
2006: 275-282.
46
47
Fraser, 195.
The hard covers of a book confer permanence, as editors of informal talks have to keep
reminding themselves.”48 This is also Linda Shopes’ conviction:
As we attempt to transform conversation to print, we must radically
intervene—‘mess around with what is said' to show clearly what is meant. . . .
We must present [our narrators] well in writing and not patronize them in doing
so.
Next edit and contextualize, rearranging to create a coherent and tight
narrative. Editor needs to be ruthless. Beware of tangents that are off the point. 49
I have tried to find a middle ground. In some cases, my narrator herself changed grammar
from slang to more “proper” English, e.g., “yeah” to “yes.” Another narrator ignored these
details. I have relied largely on instinct for this, sometimes testing the feel of the text
with friends. The key has been to spend time with the interviews: reading, re-reading,
familiarizing with themes, editing bit by bit, rearranging, and gradually letting a
coherent and faithful story emerge.50
Zinnser, Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing (Boston, Mass.: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1988), 23.
48 William
49 Suzanne Mulligan, "IOHA CONFERENCE MASTER CLASS – Editing for Oral History Publication
(notes on a Master Class by Linda Shopes),” IOHA Newsletter, September 2006 [cited 3 March 2007].
Available from http://www.flexi.net.au/~mulligan/Newsletter.htm.
Gwendolyn Joy Chappell. The Journeyman Musician, The Phoenix, and the Spiritual Musician, thesis
(Saskatoon, SK: University of Saskatchewan, March 2005) [cited 10 June 2005]. Available from
http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-03312005-184310/unrestricted/CHAPPELL2005.pdf, 41.
50
CHAPTER FOUR
PARTICIPANTS’ ORAL HISTORY NARRATIVES
I have arranged this chapter chronologically, according each woman’s arrival at
Briercrest College. Each narrative is written in first person and prefaced by a
biographical introduction to each woman.
Narrative: Jean Rhode Mahn (nee Whittaker)
Introduction
Jean Rhode Mahn is the daughter of Sinclair and Isabel Whittaker, who were instrumental in
founding Briercrest Bible Institute. Jean was born at the Moose Jaw hospital and lived in the town of
Briercrest until going to Wheaton College in 1944. Her early life involved many sacrifices in and for
Briercrest, while her later life led to unimagined privileges. She has had a career in higher education,
followed by two special marriages, first to Tom Rhode, a Wall Street lawyer, and later to Bob Mahn, a
faculty member at Ohio University. Jean is keenly interested in matters of historical record, so was eager
to meet with me. She has remained connected with Briercrest up to the present, as a supporter, an
encourager, and sometimes challenger. During one season, Jean and Bob lived in Moose Jaw, frequently
eating at the Pilgrim Restaurant. Now she resides in Athens, Ohio, still living at home thanks to her late
husband Bob who had arranged for Jean to have 24-hour live-in care after he died. I stayed overnight in
her lovely Athens home on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 and recorded our conversation there on Saturday, June
4th.
36
The Early Days
I [Jean] vividly recall the endless conversations at the supper table about the Bible
school movement when I was an impressionable teenager. This goes back to 1932 and
1934. There were Bible conferences on our family’s lawn, speakers who came from the
Moose Jaw Bible School, and some students from the Winnipeg Bible School.
Growing up in the village of Briercrest, Saskatchewan in the time of the Great
Depression, my parents Isabel and Sinclair Whittaker were concerned about the many
young people who could find no work. I recall many evenings when I was doing
homework or practicing the piano, and two of their friends, Mrs. Hillson and Mrs.
Sanderson, farmers’ wives and dedicated Christians, would visit and talk about what
could be done for the many unemployed. They were familiar with the Winnipeg Bible
Institute; in fact, several of our young folk had attended. I recall that my father paid Ellen
Rusk’s tuition. Other names I recall are Genevieve Tisdale, Margaret Rusk, and Al Blager.
They were able to attend as they had part time jobs. I’m sure the idea of having a Bible
school in Briercrest was in many of the older folks minds.
I didn’t dream about the Bible school. I just wanted to get an education, because I
had done well in school, graduating at sixteen. You had to take French, chemistry,
algebra, and trigonometry. Exams were from the department of education—you started
in grade 9 with the first and if you didn’t make them you fell back. But I was fortunate
that I didn’t have any trouble. The departmental exams were very difficult, and there was
a departmental examiner so there was no cheating. The grades were sent to you in the
mail and were published in the newspaper, with grade 12 exam grades unavailable until
mid- or late July.
I took my ATCM in piano (Associate of the Toronto Conservatory of Music),
practicing four hours a day for months. An examiner came from Toronto to give the exam
in Moose Jaw on June 28, 1938. So I had my first degree when I was 17. Before I went to
Wheaton I taught music at Briercrest about three years. I liked the students. There were
just fifteen students at the beginning. I went to Central Collegiate in Moose Jaw for two
years of university, living right in Moose Jaw. Things were already in the process of
expanding for me.
It’s hard for me to think of it now because it’s so long ago that I was there and your
thinking was pretty well governed; you had to think a certain way and I could never do
that. I used to keep a diary but I’ve thrown most of those away. I wanted to get to
Wheaton and to other places, because my mind would not accept a narrow status.
Wheaton
When we were still in the town of Briercrest, my father was instrumental in having
a summer class: the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The course taught students how to
reduce languages to writing. Eugene Nida and his wife came from New York. I helped
them and did a lot of typing. They said that I should go to Wheaton College and gave me
all the information, recommendations, and people to call. I thought, “It will be broader.”
My parents and I were in Nova Scotia that summer and driving, so we stopped at
Wheaton to see what it was like and I decided to go there.
I enjoyed Wheaton very much and did well there. Because it was wartime we
couldn’t take money across the border. My folks were anxious for me to go, but they’d
given it all to the Bible school, so I had to earn my way. I taught music, cleaned
bathrooms, received a scholarship, and graded papers, so that was full time. I enjoyed it,
but I was very busy.
I was there two years and graduated in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts, and my major
was music. In 1946 the war was over. My mother came down for the graduation. I was
dating Gordon Wright from Toronto. He wanted to marry me, but there was just
something that I didn’t like.
There was no comparison at Wheaton with Briercrest in those days. Billy Graham
had been there the year before. It was such a treat to talk to the people at Wheaton. The
openness! They still had some of the prejudices. Then when I got to Eastern Baptist
College that was another wonderful open house, because I could feel free to express my
mind. The fundamentalist movement in the world has been difficult, yet they’ve done a
lot of good.
Life Beyond Briercrest
After I went to Wheaton, I was not at Briercrest except for vacation. My first job
was in Salem, Oregon at Salem College and Academy, a Christian Junior College. I was
there for two years, and I came home at Christmas and in the summertime.
I volunteered at Arlington Beach for two summers. We did the Jean and Homer
radio program from there: I was in dialogue with Homer Edwards, and I played the
piano, and my father was the announcer. We made it up every week and talked about
everything. It was all Christian, of course. And I also worked at the store at Arlington
Beach. The radio station was held in our home for a while. That was in the 40s.
My next job during the year was on the opposite coast in Delaware at King’s
College. I was there for five years, but I went home every summer and worked at the
CHAB radio station in Moose Jaw writing continuity. I was taking the place of
announcers and other people that were on vacation.
I went to the University of Delaware after that, then I went to Eastern Baptist
College in Saint David’s, Pennsylvania, and that’s when I got into administration. It was a
broadening experience and I really enjoyed it. These were all very devoted Christians,
without the narrowness, and that was what I wanted, to be able to live the way you
wanted and not to have to just go a certain path.
Eastern Baptist College is now Eastern University. I was Assistant Professor of
Music and was in charge of the senior recitals. The Dean was a Canadian and we were
very close. He wanted some assistance one year and said to me, “Would you mind not
having vacation this summer, but going to Boston to this Middle States Association, for
AACRAO—the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers?”
I agreed.
I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know a soul there, or anything about it. My father always
said, “Anytime you go to a strange city, be sure to take a bus trip if you can,” which I did.
I was sitting on the bus about 8:00 in the morning, I didn’t know a soul, the bus was
filling up, and this tall man came down the aisle looking for a seat. I said, “You’re
welcome to sit here.” That was Bob Mahn, the man I married twenty years later, but it
wasn’t a romantic relationship then because he was married and I was dating someone,
but we were very good friends.
Bob kept in touch with me all through those twenty years, helping me because I was
still on the faculty as Assistant Professor. I learned a lot from him. I did a lot of writing
and planning with the administration. I was there the week that the Middle States were
there, answering their questions, which was very involved. Through that meeting we
were fully accredited by the Middle States Association.
I stayed at Eastern for fifteen years, and was dating Tom Ferguson who was on the
faculty. He even came out west with me, and so did his sister and her husband. He asked
me to marry him, but I didn’t feel right about it.
Marriage, Widowhood and Marriage Again
When I finished at Eastern, I went every Christmas back to Moose Jaw to be with
my parents. They also came east, while my first husband, Tom, and I were on our
honeymoon, because our wedding was in Wayne, Pennsylvania at our church there. They
came several times and we would go back to Canada to stay for a week or two at a time.
Tom was very fond of my parents. He liked them so much that he wanted to be buried
near them out in the Moose Jaw cemetery. He had cancer of the prostate, and in those
days they couldn’t do much for him, and he died, sad to say. The W. J. Jones funeral
company handled the burial.
When my mother became ill, I decided I wasn’t going to let her be alone, so I sold
the house in New York and bought a condo on the outskirts of Wilmington, Delaware,
because I thought that would be closer somehow or other. Well, I had a lot of friends
there, because I graduated from the university, but I only stayed there two years. I
decided I didn’t want it for the future, so I went back to Moose Jaw.
Going back to Moose Jaw was very depressing, because Tom and I had lived in New
York and I missed it so much. I used to go out and walk the dog and cry because I was
just so depressed, but I didn’t want my mother to know how I felt. I told her that I would
never buy anything in Moose Jaw in the way of clothes, because I was so used to New
York and it was such a shock to see the difference. She said, “You just do whatever you
want.” Well, I had a Lord and Taylor credit card from New York; I could call and they’d
send.
I decided to visit a number of churches and decide which one I liked, and St.
Andrews was the tops. I asked, “What can I do to help?” They needed someone to help
by visiting, working with the class that was coming in for membership, and helping in
the office. I did that full time as a volunteer for several years, and it was very uplifting.
My minister, Brian Brown, and I were very close friends. One day we were out and
we saw an abandoned farmhouse, and he said, “How about you sitting there and getting
a picture with your little dog.” I talk to him about twice a month or so. He and his wife
live south of Toronto. He’s at the United Church and he’s very, very committed. My
second husband and I were married in Moose Jaw at St. Andrews. That’s where my folks
were married in 1917.
Brian Brown was a wonderful Bible scholar and minister, from Nova Scotia.
Tremendous. I said to my mother, “Do you mind if I go to St. Andrews?” And she said,
“Just do whatever you want.” Brian visited her and in her diary later we noticed, she said,
“Brian Brown was here and he’s a wonderful minister. He’s from Nova Scotia.”
My parents had this beautiful house and well-landscaped backyard on the river in
Moose Jaw, so it was a delightful spot, especially in the evening. I was living there, and
we had a lot of parties with friends from there. Then it turned out that the city was going
to close off all the houses that were on the river because of flood concerns, so I decided to
sell. Somebody bought it and moved the house, so it’s not there anymore. I bought a
condominium in the city and enjoyed that very much. Of course I had my second Shi Tsu.
I did some traveling from there because I wanted to see some more of the world and, not
knowing that Bob Mahn was going to come up and invite me to be his wife, I had
ordered tickets for the QEII to London, and the Concord and a trip to the Highlands, and
they were very costly.
I always told Bob if he was ever in the area to come up. It was sixteen years ago this
weekend that he called: on Memorial Day he had a holiday and was going to see his son
in Yellowstone, and he’d like to come up. So he came, and he called from Drinkwater. In
those days you didn’t have cell phones, you had phones on the highway. He called: “I’m
here a little early and I’d like to take you to lunch.” And I said, “Oh, I’m sorry Bob but I
can’t go, I already have an arrangement to go to lunch,” and I didn’t want to cancel it. He
said he was coming anyway. He tried to find a place to eat and everything was french
fries, but he never liked that kind of thing. He finally found some place to eat. When I
came back from lunch he was there at the condo on the porch. The condo had a second
bedroom, so Bob slept in that.
I wanted him to meet some of my friends. That night we had the Whittakers over.
The Whittakers and I were very good friends, but they weren’t relatives. They lived in
Moose Jaw. The Howes from Moose Jaw had a cottage on one of the lakes, and they’d
wanted to entertain us, so we went to that cottage and just had a very good time.
In three days Bob asked me to marry him. I said, “Oh I’d like to but I’ve got these
tickets. I don’t want to give them up.” He couldn’t get tickets because they were all sold,
so we had to wait until I had those trips. We decided to get married on September 15th,
1989. (My first wedding had been September 5th, right on Labour Day.)
I had the Shi Tsu, Kichi Kuchi. When we came down to Ohio after we were married,
I left the dog with the vet because I didn’t feel like taking it on the honeymoon. We were
down here for at least ten days and ate at the Inn all the time. That’s where we met Dr.
Baker, the former president of Ohio University who was over 100 years old.
Bob went back up to Canada with the intention of becoming a citizen. What trouble
we had at the line coming across the border. Bob says, “Well, I’m from Athens but I’m
going to live at 17 Second Street.”
“Well, what kind of papers do you have?” the officials asked.
“Oh, I have my birth certificate,” Bob said, “my citizenship and whatnot.”
They said, “That’s not enough,” and we were held at the border for about six hours
while they phoned all over the place. They called him a landed immigrant. It was a shock.
I had no idea it was anything like that, and neither did Bob. He had to report in Calgary,
Alberta at a tax place.
Bob was very popular in Moose Jaw. People wanted him to be on committees and he
wouldn’t. I think he did go on one and he lasted about two meetings. He said, “It’s not for
me. I don’t want that.”
We stayed in Moose Jaw five years. The Whittakers and the Howes were very good
friends. I still am in contact with them, although Doug Whittaker has died and his wife
has moved out to Alberta. The Howes I talk to almost every week. We had lots of friends
and lots of parties. We went out to Caronport almost every morning for breakfast, and
we got to know Connie Wiebe so well. We were very close, often going to her place, and
they came down to visit that year, because they were married about a month after we
were. We ate at the Pilgrim Restaurant a lot, even coming out in the winter when it was
cold because we had an in-car heater and block heater and we’d just plug the car in.
Our lawyer said to me, “Jean, you’ll never make anything for retirement if you
continue to live in Canada and the U.S. It has to be one or the other,” because we were
paying taxes in both countries. And so we had to decide. I made the decision to move
back to Ohio, because I knew it wouldn’t be fair to Bob to have him in Canada since he
hadn’t been there very long. I gave a lot of my things to the school and came here, but we
went back every year during the summer.
Briercrest Women
It could be that the men’s lives and the women’s lives were quite separate at
Briercrest. I hadn’t even thought about it. The women were sort of docile. I don’t think
they’d ever express themselves. I think there was a lot of carryover from the Mennonites:
very strong ideas about men and women.
Dr. Hildebrand says that in the early days the women knew more than the men
about the Bible. I’m sure it was true, because they studied it. I really don’t know how
their influence was. Mrs. Hillson was a great Bible student. Her husband was a farmer,
and they lived on a farm. People were critical of her. I went to her Bible studies; she
didn’t have the personality that my father or my mother had. Mrs. Ernie Sanderson was
very active. She and my mother were good friends. I’d never talk to Mrs. Sanderson and
Mrs. Hillson about my thinking because I just knew it would be a problem, and you learn
what you have to do to have friends. But I’m glad that Briercrest is making changes. My
father saw it when he resigned.
In those days you couldn’t dance. Hazel Tisdale was my Sunday School teacher, so I
remember asking her, “Where does it say in the Bible that you couldn’t dance?” And she
said, “The Bible says, ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’” Well,
that’s a far cry from answering the question.
When I got the posting at Eastern Baptist College in Philadelphia, I talked to them
and said all my life I had wanted to dance and at this point I was hoping to. They said,
“Just go ahead.” So I took lessons from Andrew Murray, and then when I’d go on a trip
I’d take dancing lessons.
When I went on this twenty-seven day cruise from New York to the
Mediterranean—Africa, Gibraltar, Athens, Greece, you name the places—I took dancing
lessons and won the first prize for the cha-cha on one of those nights. The prize was a
bottle of champagne, and I’d never had champagne; I didn’t drink that bottle.
I talk with Genevieve Tisdale about every two weeks or so. Her name is Blager now.
She was a teacher, not at the Bible school, but she and her husband sang on the Young
People’s hour. She’s got to be 90. She is in Moose Jaw.
Margaret Rusk taught. She and I went on a Daily Vacation Bible School expedition.
She visited me down in the States, too. She was very clever, but I don’t think she ever had
a thought about the narrowness that we grew up with.
Mrs. Andrew Glen was a friend of my mother’s. She was from Prince Edward Island.
Her children were Reg and Marion and Blanche, who went as a missionary. They lived
out on the farm. Her daughter Marion married Harold Healy, who was a Catholic. My
father hired Harold to be the head in one of his stores in Briercrest. Harold was a very
fine person. My father was very opposed to people who downed the Catholics. He had
been brought up in Ontario where there was a lot of anti-Catholic feeling and he vowed
when he came out West that he was going to be kind to the Catholics. So he hired
Harold, the only Catholic family’s oldest son to be the manager of one of his stores, and
Harold dated Marion Glen and married her.
Marion’s mother would have nothing to do with the wedding, they were so
prejudiced. It was sad. They wrote nasty letters to my father. My father was the only one
invited to the wedding—the master of ceremonies at this Catholic wedding, which
shows how broad-minded he was.
The Catholics have changed since Pope John the XXII. In fact, I went to Christ the
King Catholic Church for six weeks to a Bible study taught by Father Don. I remember
one of the students in the class asked him, “You’ll go to hell if you’re not baptized, won’t
you, Father?” Father Don said, “Oh no. Baptism is the outward sign of the inward faith.”
And that was what I learned when I was studying the Shorter Catechism to become a
member of the United Church, so there’s been a big difference.
I took membership in the United Church when I was about twelve or fourteen, and
that was a no-no. That’s the church that I grew up in. It was where I was baptized. Then
an evangelist came from Three Hills and told us we should leave the United Church.
Unfortunately my father was taken in by him. All of the people left the United Church,
started our own little church, and had Sunday meetings over my father’s store in
Briercrest. Those were the things that I saw looking from a distance. It wasn’t easy. I’m
thankful things have changed.
It’s really sad that there’s been so much prejudice, because that caused a lot of
difficulty with the Bible school. But my parents were very open, and I grew up with that
idea that each one has to make our own decision and we can’t judge another. Scripture
says, “Judge not that ye be not judged,“ but that’s what was going on. In the
fundamentalist rank it’s been very sad. Fortunately it’s changing, and I’m sure it’s
changing at Briercrest.
Father and Mother
My father and I were very close. And my mother, too, though my brother was more
close with her. I commissioned and donated a painting, which hangs in the Whittaker
foyer.1 My father had always dreamed of using the post-war air bases as a Bible school.
He used his talents as a former MLA and his own personal funds to secure Caron air base
after the war.
My father was of the opinion that he should not consider being a candidate to the
Legislature. It wasn’t the thing to do. The more I think about that the more I feel it was a
sad, sad situation for my father to give all his money and then not have enough to live on,
or to educate my brother and me.
In April 1994, at the dedication of the mural of my parents, I was able to tell about
the beginnings. The tremendous response of the audience at Hildebrand Chapel resulted
in a standing ovation, which made me very happy. Mr. Hildebrand came up and was one
of the first to thank me. I wrote a letter to Orville and Clara Swenson saying,
I’m sure that Mr. Hildebrand had no idea of the heartaches and negative
publicity which calling him ‘founder’ has caused. Further I’m sure he would not
want to receive credit to which he is not entitled. Unfortunately, too many of
the generation now in leadership roles do not know any better, so the untruth is
perpetuated.
On May 26th, 1996, the Diamond Jubilee year, I sent a similar letter to John Barkman.
My mother was very clever. She had come from Nova Scotia, because her mother had
died when she was six weeks old, and she had to live with relatives and never wore shoes
in the summer. The doctor told her she should move from Nova Scotia because there was
so much tuberculosis and her relatives were dying of it, so she got a harvesters’ train and
1
The Whittaker foyer is located between the Whittaker dormitories and the college cafeteria.
went to Winnipeg where she stayed with relatives and worked at the T. Eaton
Company. She had already gone to normal school in Nova Scotia, so she could teach. She
taught in a country school outside of Briercrest, met my father at some friends’ house,
and they were married in 1917.
My mother got into the Bible school movement with all those ladies at Briercrest.
When my father quit—gave up—in the 1950s, by that time she had nothing, he had
nothing, and it was all there at the Bible school. So I used to send them money, because
my husband wanted to.
My mother and my father were very much alike. She taught English and speech and
sacrificed many of life’s material pleasures to see the growth of the school. As a woman I
think she was more hurt. She kept it to herself, but I could just tell. She did express
herself somewhat, but I knew that it wasn’t easy for her, because of the things that she
sort of expected as a wife of an MLA. My father died in 1974. My mother died poor by
material standards but rich in soul.
Founder Confusion
On September the 5th, 1934, my father and I met Mr. Hildebrand at the Harwood
Hotel in Moose Jaw and brought him home to Briercrest. The idea of a Bible school was
then pushed by my mother and Mrs. Hillson, and the first class was in October 1935 at
the Nichols’ house. That first Bible school was rented for five dollars a month. My mother
taught speech and I taught music. I was just 16.
In the summer of 1939 my father had five stores in different parts of Saskatchewan. It
was a time of depression, and he was of the opinion that the Rouleau store wasn’t going
to make it, so he went to the Briercrest town council and said, “We’d like to get the
hotel, because we can use that as a Bible school,” and my father and the people he could
hire would build a town hall, because the town didn’t have one. So he arranged to have
the Rouleau store moved, and the lumber from the store was used in exchange for the
Yale Hotel. I’ll never forget: all summer we boarded the workers at our house and had
meals for them.
By this time the school had acquired the Walker house, which was right across the
street from us, the Gilroy house where the Hildebrands lived, the Fonger house, and the
Jameison building where the telephone office was. In 1939 war was declared and the
enrolment from the Bible school went from 110 to 51. When the war was over in 1945 and
there were 50 applicants, that was when my father made negotiations for the air base. He
had the trees planted and arranged for the store and post office at the base.
Getting the school moved from the village of Briercrest to the air base is an
accomplishment for which my father will always be remembered. He saw the need for
facilities beyond those available in Briercrest. He set his mind to securing an airport. The
staff, and even Mr. Hildebrand resisted the move, but my father prevailed. He used his
talents as a former MLA to negotiate the purchase of the airport and paid the deposit for
the down payment. He and I named the base Caronport.
It was in 1950 at a meeting, when Alvin Memory came from Outram, Saskatchewan
to give money [to the school], that Hildebrand said, “I wish our president [Whittaker]
could duplicate that.” That was all my father needed and he resigned the next morning
but didn’t say why. Well, he didn’t want to hurt Hildebrand or the school, but now it’s
got to be known. Making it known would be a real tribute, because it’s so far in the past.
Hildebrand deserves a lot of credit for bringing the school to the excellent place it is, but
early publications state that Hildebrand was the president from the beginning and he
was not.
He’d given it all in ’58. He lived for 16 more years, always lauded the school, never
once spoke anything but good. My parents lived on the old age pension and what I could
send them. That can’t help but make you sad, especially when Hildebrand was given all
the credit, and I felt he didn’t deserve it, but my father just wouldn’t speak up.
Paul Magnus wrote to me, “Thank you for your thoughtfulness in responding to our
challenge for finances. We deeply appreciate it. Thank you also for your reference to the
designation of founder to H. Hildebrand in the Alumni Directory. We apologize. I had
not seen the picture or the statement. We will correct it in the future.”
A page from Famous Canadians of the Great Pine Ridge2 pays tribute to my father’s
contribution to the Dominion at the time of the Centennial celebration. In going through
my father’s papers, which I intend to bring to the archives, two will be of special interest
to present day students: the letter which he wrote April the 6th with his cheque as he
negotiated for the air base, and the six pages of legislative proceeding, with the
resolution and tremendous tributes from the Premier and outstanding legislators. The
Legislative Proceedings document now is in the legislative vaults in Regina. It was dated
November 29th, 1974.
One of the first assemblies after my father’s death was of special interest to me, to
read what one of the legislators wrote. This was a young man who attended the high
school at Caronport and who became interested in government as a result of his contact
Dora Holdaway, Famous Canadians of the Great Pine Ridge, Pine Ridge Publications, Bewdley Ontario,
1967, 38. Located in the Trent Valley Archives; list of holdings available from
http://www.trentvalleyarchives.com/Library%20finding%20aid.pdf [cited 8 March 2007].
2
with my father. He wrote, “The school was officially organized and chartered in 1935,
with Mr. Whittaker as the first president and chairman of the board, a position he held
until 1950.”3
Sacrifices
When I think what my father gave up, what I gave up because my father gave his
money—it was a fortune. To have Hildebrand getting the credit, that’s all I can handle.
On July 10th, 2005, it has been thirty-one years since my father died. Generations have
passed, and many have no idea what Sinclair Whittaker accomplished. As Henry Budd
wrote at the time of his death, “The Whittakers literally placed their all behind the Bible
Institute. No one will ever know how much they invested.” Mother used to say, “Dad is
the bank.” As his daughter, I know he gave his farms, his businesses, his insurance
policies, his bank accounts, all his financial resources—and I’ll give you this, too: he used
to say, “We save to give.” It all went to the school. A local farmer who knew my father
well declared, “Sinclair Whittaker would have been a millionaire if he hadn’t given it all
to the Bible school.”
I remember wanting a bicycle so much as I learned to ride on a neighbour’s bike, but
the Bible school came first. It was only in reading Mr. Hildebrand’s book that I learned
that my father gave him a 1927 Chevrolet.4 And what I did as a kid, because the Yale
Hotel in Briercrest hadn’t been used, and my mother and I boarded the men that were
working, then we cleaned the Yale Hotel. I was seventeen, giving up my room for
speakers and missionaries. I paid my own way to Wheaton College. They didn’t have
3
Original source unknown.
4
H. Hildebrand, In His Loving Service, 74.
enough to send me to college. I paid my own way to Wheaton College by giving music
lessons at 25 cents a lesson, cleaning bathrooms as my work scholarship, and grading
papers.
I suffered as a result of the Bible school. So did my brother. My parents lived on the
old age pension and what I was able to send them—they literally gave their all and died
poor in this world’s goods.
Thankfulness
Even so, I have a lot to be thankful for, that I had such good friends and I don’t
suppose anyone’s had the privileges that I’ve had in my later life.
It was a joy to live in New York on Long Island. I’ve lived many places—Salem,
Oregon; Newark, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Port Washington, New York;
but the New York Island was my favorite. I have much to be thankful for, meeting Tom
Rhode at Le Moal Restaurant in New York City through a stranger who very kindly
invited me to share his taxi when I was stranded due to a snowstorm at La Guardia
airport. Henry David, a Jewish gentleman related to the Gimbels, introduced me to his
lawyer, Tom Rhode, whom I later married.
When I married Tom, someone gave us a Shih Tsu as a gift. That was 1969, the first
year that Shih Tsus were admitted to the American Kennel Society. Our first dog’s name
was Princey, but she had a Chinese name on the register. My husband had a Chinese man
who worked for him, so the certificate of registration was written by the person who
knew the Chinese. The name in Chinese was “Lu Er Nu” (“Old First Dog”). That’s the
way they decide—she was the first one to be born in the litter. I used to go to the
Westminster Kennel show in New York. And I’d go to the Shih Tsu arena. Each dog has
it’s own pen. I’d go to the Huskies and the Shih Tsus.
Tom didn’t want me to work, so I had an exciting life. Most of his clients were
Jewish multi-millionaires who frequently entertained us. My husband and I would be the
only non-millionaires at their dinner parties. Josie Uris, of the Uris buildings in New
York, was one such multi-millionaire lady: a Canadian from Quebec and a former Paris
model, she had three homes and seven servants. Her husband and his brother built the
Hilton Hotel. We became very close friends and I enjoyed her company.
Because of my husband’s position as trust lawyer at Irving Trust on One Wall Street
in New York City, we were able to stay at the Waldorf Astoria any time, any weekend
we wanted. We met most interesting people there as we used the special entrance. One
night we joined the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Tom was wonderful and we just had everything. Both of my husbands were very
special.
Another privilege for me was being able to make many trips. Tom and I had a
month’s honeymoon: Amsterdam, Holland, the island of Mallorca, Gibraltar, Portugal.
We had other trips during our time together. I vividly recall Rio de Janeiro, the pyramids
in Egypt, and later with other friends, the Highlands of Scotland, the British Isles,
Pompei, France, Athens, Greece. Sad to relate, he died of cancer after just seven years of
marriage.
My second husband, Bob Mahn, was on the faculty of Ohio University, was a
Trustee, and wrote several books. We lived in Athens, Ohio, and that is where I am still
living as he died in 2004. Because of him, I have many privileges, belong to two private
clubs, and have many friends.
Back in 1983 on my way to New York with two of my friends, I was in a tragic car
accident—a five-car pile-up and both my friends were instantly killed. I survived but
with many serious injuries and was in hospital for six months then in rehabilitation for
six months. Thankfully I have recovered and will be 88 on November 14.
It has been a good life, a blessed life. I have much to be thankful for.
Narrative: Esther Edwards and Selma Penner
Introduction
Esther Edwards and Selma Penner have been friends since 1945. I interviewed them together in
Esther’s home in Abbotsford, BC on November 2, 2004, receiving the excellent hospitality for which
Esther is famous. Her husband Homer wrote a series of devotional books, and in the second volume there
is a foreword by Henry Hildebrand with these words:
Reverend Homer and Esther Edwards are a couple with grace and taste. They love the Lord
and his Word. To know them is to love them. We love being with them. Both excel in their given
role. Esther’s wholehearted hospitality and zest for living is an inspiration to behold, while
Homer’s loyalty to his Lord and to his servants is to be emulated. He has a genuine pastor’s
heart and excels as a soul winner. Treasures of Truth, volume 2, is the fruit of a life-long
walk with God. It has been hammered out on the anvil of affliction. Each treasure will be a
benediction to the reader.5
During the interview, Esther recalled that she typed the manuscript for Treasures of Truth, volume 2;
however, upon hearing this excerpt, Esther responded to me, “Thank you. I don’t even remember reading
that.”
Esther Edwards was a student in the late 1930s, then became Henry Hildebrand’s first secretary.
After marrying Homer, she focused on renovating or building their series of first homes and on taking
care of the family. In her last year at Briercrest she worked in the alumni office. Esther and Homer left
5
Homer Edwards, “Foreward,” in Treasures of Truth, vol. 2 (Aldergrove, BC: Valcraft Publishing, n.d.).
Briercrest to pastor a church in Regina, where they stayed for many years until Homer’s Parkinson’s
disease forced their retirement. She is now widowed and lives in Abbotsford, BC.
Selma Penner has been Esther’s dear friend since coming with her husband to the town of Briercrest.
Selma and Henry were hard workers and their hands have literally marked this campus through painting
houses and planting trees. Selma is also widowed and lives in Abbotsford, BC.
When I phoned to ask for an interview, Esther suggested interviewing herself and Selma together, as
Selma was pretty quiet and Esther was not sure how much Selma would have to say. When we met for the
actual interview, Selma’s voice was very strong, especially dialoguing with Esther. Initially I had
imagined writing separate narratives for each of them, but their voices were so intertwined that
separation was impossible; therefore, while the other narratives read like personal autobiographies, this
one reads more like a conversation.
Esther: In on the Ground Floor
Esther: I think we should feel very highly honoured that we were in on the ground
floor of Briercrest, because it was ’35 when it started, and I started school in ’39. My
husband and I graduated in ’42. Homer and Harry went to school together. Harry
graduated in ’41. There are no Echoes from our class, 1942.
Selma: Jean Whittaker edited the Echoes.
Esther: And she graduated in ’42 with us.
Esther: Mrs. Hillson taught. I don’t remember what the subject was. I never got
anything out of it because I didn’t know what she was talking about. But it was
something to do with prophecy.6 She was very old, and she probably knew her material,
but she couldn’t get it across to me.
She and Mrs. Whittaker were instrumental in starting the school. They prayed and
the school started with some of the fellows that couldn’t afford to go back to Winnipeg
Bible College. These fellows knew Dr. Hildebrand, so they got him to come and teach
them, and that started it. They were in a little old house (probably was the same one that
Selma and Harry lived in). Odd Brygmann did the cooking, I think; then it was just men.
There may have been one lady, but I’m not too sure about that.7
Mrs. Whittaker taught for awhile, too. She taught English I think, but I can’t really
remember what that was like. Then there was another lady teacher, Margaret Rusk. I
think it was English that she taught. Anybody that didn’t have high school had to take
English classes—and a lot of them didn’t have high school. I didn’t have to take English
because I had mostly high school.
There’s a cute little story about Margaret. One day in the middle of the winter Mr.
Hildebrand had cancelled her class for some reason or another but had forgotten to call
her, and she braved the snow to come. We heard him out in the hall apologizing to her
how sorry he was. “Well you better be!” she said.
We women went to Bible school before we were married, then we stayed home and
looked after our babies and our husbands. I wanted to go to Bible school so I could learn
more about the Bible, ‘cause we didn’t have any Bible church where I grew up, and it was
so lonely. My sister was 5 years older, so I was the only one at home, and I just about died
6
Mrs. Annie Hillson is listed in early catalogues as teaching “Dispensational Truth.”
Dr. Henry Budd writes that female students boarded in local homes. Wind in the Wheatfields
(Caronport, SK: Briercrest Bible College, 1985).
7
of loneliness. My folks would rather that I had gone to a Lutheran Bible school in the
States, but the war had just started and nobody could get across the line, so they
condescended to let me go to that “eternal security, once-saved-always-saved” school!
Took them many years to believe that!
I did a 3-year diploma course at the school. I went to school at Christmas time, and
they let me graduate in two-and-a-half years. I wrote essays to make up for the three
months I wasn’t there. And that’s of course where I met Homer. We used to sing
together on the radio. After we graduated I went to Regina and took a business course,
then came back and worked for Dr. Hildebrand. And that’s really when Homer and I
started to go together. All we could do was smile at each other; sure couldn’t have a date.
The school had a radio broadcast all across Canada at that time; it was called “The
Young People’s Hour.” It was aired in just about every province. I did the correspondence
for that and receipted the money. I only worked there about a year and a half I think,
because Homer and I decided we were going to get married. I was so sure he was the one
for me, so I wasn’t worried about getting married. So I didn’t work, I stayed home. We
had an awful apartment with an awful lot of work to do on painting and scrubbing and
sanding floors and building cupboards, so that took a lot of time. But that’s the way it
was.
Homer graduated the same year as I did, 1942, then he stayed on and at first he
taught the music course, and then they had him teach Bible, and after that he taught first
year Bible and public speaking. He took a Dale Carnegie course, which is fascinating. It
put life into the public speaking class. A friend of mine talks about all the funny things
that he did. Homer taught homiletics, too, and personal evangelism. He had quite a load.
My husband was Hildebrand’s right-hand boy. He said he didn’t give him the title—
you didn’t get titles in those days—but he was his assistant. At first Homer taught
singing lessons and led the choir, but my husband was not good at leading, so Mr.
Hildebrand said, “Well, if you’ll sing in the choir, I’ll lead it.” So that’s what they did. I
sang in that choir before we were married, but I don’t think I did after we were married. I
remember that we did sing as a duet for awhile, because shortly after we were married
they wanted us to come over and practice one night. We were supposed to be there at
six o’clock, so we had supper and I just left the dishes on the table and threw my clothes
off and threw them on the couch; we didn’t have a bedroom, we just had two rooms and
a couch to sleep on. When we got back the place was full of people. I was so
embarrassed. They had come to give us a shower. They gave us a little table that I still
have. So that’s why I hate surprises.8
The School Moves to Caronport
Esther: The next year, 1946, we moved up to Caronport, a former British Air Force
base where it is now. I remember because Dale was born in ’47. When we moved, it was
to fix up another apartment all over again. We were living in an officers’ quarters, but it
wasn’t very wonderful.
Selma: When we first moved there after the air force had been there, there were
some of kind of bugs in the kitchen, in the walk-in fridge.
Esther: Cockroaches, I suppose. The place was run by the British Air Force, and the
buildings had been empty a couple of years before we moved there. We had to build our
You know, when they had that farewell for us at Regina, Donna knew about it, it was
supposed to be a surprise for Homer, you see. It was Corinne and Paul [Hildebrand] that instigated most of
it, but Donna said to them, “You’d better tell mother. She doesn’t like surprises.” So they did.
8 Esther:
own kitchen cupboards, and Homer wasn’t a builder. I don’t know how he ever did it,
but I think he found some old cupboards in one of the shops and dragged those in, and
got something built at the top.
Selma: We had to move our wood and coal cook stove to the suite.
Esther: We had to run to the bathroom for water, because we didn’t have water in
our suites. Oh, we were primitive.
Selma: The bathroom had six sinks and three showers and then there was no
bathtub. The toilet part had three toilets, but that had a door. And the showers just had a
curtain for each stall.9
Esther: We shared it with the next door neighbour. There was one apartment at one
end and one apartment at the other end, on both of these A and B dorms.10 They’re not
there anymore. We were in B. You were in A, weren’t you?
Selma: Yes, we were downstairs.
Esther: We were upstairs.
Selma: And you were with Brygmanns at the other side.
Esther: Not only did we have to share the bathrooms with all the families, there was
a guest room at our end. So if there were any guests they had to share it, too. Once they
sent a fellow up there they just took off the street! Homer was away (he was away most
of the summer with the quartet or a music group and I was alone). I was scared stiff! I
didn’t have any locks on the doors. I should have gone over to that office and blasted
them, but I didn’t. And I managed to live without being molested. It was a very silly thing
9 This type of set-up has been called “gang showers,” where all of the curtains could be pulled back.
There were no fixed stalls. I remember the showers being like this into the 1980s in C and D dorm.
Most of the dorms, such as A and B, were two-story H-huts, with halls on the long sides and
communal bathrooms in the middle section.
10
for them to do, to send a stranger off the street over to sleep in the apartments.
Eventually after Donna, our last baby, we got that room ourselves, but otherwise we just
had the four rooms. We just had two children. But you had how many in four rooms? Or
did you have five rooms?
Selma: We had six children in four rooms. Claire was born in what was known as
the flour shed. There were four suites in there. Two upstairs and two down. Grymaloskis
lived upstairs, Shaufs were beside us, and Eliasons were downstairs and I don’t know
who else.
Esther: Was it Hieberts? Doris and Elbert. You’re stretching our thoughts here!
That’s where the air force stored the flour, so that’s why it was called the flour shed. The
school made all their own bread in those days. Harold McKay used to be the baker. He
was also the butcher, but he quit because the school didn’t want to do any more
butchering.
Selma: Gertie’s been there for a long time. You should interview her. And Mae
Pomeroy.
Esther: And Erna Rempel.
Selma: Erna never was married. She was a twin sister to Ella, who married Lillian
Diggins’ brother. Ella and Erna.
Esther: That first winter we were at Caronport was a terrible winter. The snow was
up to the roofs and that’s not exaggerating. It was one awful winter. We had a practical
nurse named Tina Blatz and she delivered two babies that year.
Selma: She delivered a baby on New Year’s day. It was such a stormy night that Mrs.
Hanslien couldn’t get into Moose Jaw for the delivery, so Tina Blatz delivered the baby.
Esther: Our son Dale was due in March, and I was scared stiff I’d be stuck out there,
too. So I prevailed upon one of my friends in Moose Jaw to let me stay with them for a
couple of weeks until the snow melted, then I could come home. He was born on the 22nd
of March in Moose Jaw.
Selma: That was the winter when even a train got stuck. The train went right close,
not too far from Caronport, just a little bit south. They hauled coal by horse and sleigh
from the train.
Esther: See the highway wasn’t running right beside Caronport at that time. It was
further south and around, so we didn’t have very good roads.
Selma: We used to go walking around the runway.
Esther: Till they tore it up. And we used to go bike riding on the runway, too, and
they tore it up. Don’t ask me why.
Selma: Well, didn’t they sell the land or something? Didn’t somebody farm it then? I
don’t know for sure. We used to store the coal on there, remember? Used to have that
soft coal for the furnaces.
Esther: I don’t know why they tore it up. But, anyway, we were very unhappy about
it. When they were building the highway, some of us used to go bike riding. I went one
night and they had just put tar on there. Oh, I came back, and I couldn’t see what was
going on.
Selma: It was wet.
Esther: I spent the whole next day cleaning it off Dale’s bike. Myself, too, for all that
tar. So that was the end of the bike riding.
Selma and Harry
Selma: My husband’s name was Henry, but he always got Harry in public school,
because there was too many Henrys in the school. We went to work for the school in the
fall of ’45 at the town of Briercrest. It was the last winter the school was there and my
husband was hauling garbage and sewage. I don’t know where they took it.
Esther: One of the fellows, Lloyd Cross, was on detail to clean the girls’ toilets. It
wasn’t flush toilets, it was just cans. He fell down the back stairs, and the stuff slopped
all over him. Whether he didn’t think of it or whether they couldn’t afford it, I don’t
know, but they didn’t send his suit to the cleaners, he just stuffed it in the furnace. I
always laugh when I think of that.
Selma: I had known my husband Harry since I was young. We lived two miles apart
as children. He was four years older than I. When I was born, Harry’s mother was going
to come to my folks’ place to see the baby, so he said he was going, too. His mother asked
how he wanted to buy me and he said, “Oh, that cluck with the chickens.” A cluck is an
old hen that sat on a nest.
Anyway, he wasn’t a Christian and he didn’t go to church. His folks used to go to the
[Mennonite] Conference church, but he didn’t really live for the Lord then.
Esther: Well, how did Harry get saved?
Selma: One fall when Harry went up to Rosetown to work, and he was walking on
the road, hitchhiking home or something, and I think that’s when he realized his need of
the Lord. I don’t know how he knew about Briercrest, but he went a couple of weeks
early and helped them clean the place up. They were just moving into that hotel. Harry
hadn’t finished his high school, so when he graduated from college he finished two years
of high school. He wanted to be a policeman, but we were already going together and my
father didn’t want him to be a policeman.
Esther: He was a big tall 6 footer.
Selma: After he finished school, we lived on my dad’s homestead for a couple of years
and he helped his dad with the farming. We also went to Toronto and he took a
missionary medical course. We were going to go to the Phillipines, but I hadn’t had any
Bible school so it just didn’t work out, but I guess Harry wanted to be in the Lord’s work
and that’s when we went to Briercrest.
We had four kids there at Briercrest. Jordan was born before that, so he was already
at Briercrest in that first year we were there. And then we had two girls and then two
more boys. They were born in Moose Jaw, not on ‘Port. Claire was born when we were in
the flour shed.11
Work, Money, and Houses
Selma: I worked in the kitchen some and I took Claire along. She was maybe two,
and she would sleep under one of the open shelves there. I had to come in at lunch for her
lunch and for her nap. I also worked at the lunch counter12 quite a bit. And I would go to
three farms and do day work. All in one day.
Esther: I worked in the Alumni office—just part time—for about a year just before
we left for Regina in 1967. I worked for 40 cents an hour.
Selma: What did I get when I did three houses? I think I got ten dollars.
11 The ladies and I had a long discussion about “the flour shed,” trying to determine which building it
is. Currently it is known as the Simpson Building, located across 2 nd Avenue from Hillson Hall, with five
condo-style dwellings.
12
The service station/restaurant.
Esther: Surely not.
Selma: And then we went to Moose Jaw and shopped for groceries.
Esther: I laughed, once after I was out here in Abbotsford Mr. Hildebrand—well, I
call him Henry now because he told me to—he wanted me to do some typing for him. So
I did, and then he wanted to pay me. I was working part time at the Cannon Clinic here
and getting pretty good pay, but I laughed and I said, “Oh, Henry, I get almost as much
now in one hour as you used to pay me for the whole month.” I know times have
changed. If it hadn’t been for my folks I’d have been naked. Well, what can you buy for 15
dollars?
Selma: Well, you used to pay 2 dollars for a pair of shoes—a dollar-ninety-eight.
Esther: Not my shoes. My father said, “Esther’s got such big feet, we have to take her
to Saskatoon and get them fitted. And we have to pay 5 dollars fifteen cents for them.”
In the early 60s I worked in a medical clinic in Moose Jaw for a year, because the
kids wanted a horse. Homer had his study at home, so he was home most of the time.
Our daughter was about ten years old. They didn’t want to wait for me to come home, so
Donna and my husband would make supper. His favorite salad was banana salad: banana
and lettuce.
So they got their horse. Donna got a Shetland pony and one was supposed to be for
Dale, but I still think they were Homer’s horses. Homer liked really good horses,
Arabians, and you couldn’t ride them they were so flighty. So he got his Arabian horse.
We had another one, too. Jahnkes from Herbert gave Dale and Alan Unrau a horse
between the two of them. It stayed in the little barn that Homer had built. Its name was
“Stinky” and he was stinky, too. When they put him in the stall he would back up real
fast and break the harness, so my husband fixed that by putting something on back of
the heels and he’d back into it and quit doing that.
We used the school cars to get to Moose Jaw. We didn’t have a car of our own. How
could you afford a car on a hundred dollars a month? I don’t know what kind of cars the
school owned. All I know is they were black. We had to pay to rent them, too: two
dollars every time we took it to Moose Jaw, if we wanted to go to the doctor or
something. Homer didn’t like the barbers out in school, so he always went in to Moose
Jaw to have his hair cut; and then he had a brother that lived in there, so we’d go in there
to visit them, too. And, of course, shopping, clothes—we had to go to Moose Jaw for
clothes. We sure didn’t go very often. They had a grocery store on the premises in
Caronport at that time. We did have our own car the last year or two.
Selma: Fenders had a car, but then they had a farm. When we came to the school at
Caronport, we brought a cow that we owned.
Esther: Oh, I never knew that.
Selma: I don’t know how we brought it there. Can’t quite remember all the details
now! Then they got more cows, too. They had a nice barn. Harry and Homer were good
with the cows.
Esther: My husband always wanted to be a dairy farmer before he decided the Lord
wanted him to teach or preach or whatever. When it came to the cows, the school had to
have milk, and they couldn’t have any other ways but to have the cows right there. So
Sinclair Whittaker bought some old scrubs and Homer was horrified. He said those were
just awful cows, so he persuaded the board to let him go and find some good cows. He
said, “They’ll produce twice as much milk as these old scrubs, and we’ll have some good
purebreds.”
Selma: Still need feed, too.
Esther: They had a big barn on the Caronport yard, west of the houses, not too far
from the highway. Eventually Highway One got there. We felt like the Lord directed
them to put it there, because it would make easy access to Moose Jaw.
Anyhow I don’t remember how many cows they ended up with. It was quite a few.
They had the best.
Selma: They always went to the Holstein shows in Regina for eight years, and they
ended up with the best herd in Saskatchewan.
Esther: That was quite a few years, too. You’ll find that in Miracle on the Prairie or
Beacon on the Prairie, one of them. There were two of these books, because in the first one
there was too much about the cows. Bernard Palmer came up and interviewed Homer,
you see, and he was fascinated with his stories about the cows, so he put a really long
chapter in there, a whole chapter about the cattle, and all that transpired with it, like the
shows. They used to pick little calves for the children to show at the 4H clubs, calf club.
And of course, my husband always picked the best ones and he knew a cow. I could
show you a picture of the best one after we moved to Abbotsford. He and a partner of his
across the line had the fifth best cow all across the States one year. So the kids always
won the prize.
Selma: We used to buy milk in quart bottles for fifteen cents.
Esther: Right, we had to buy the milk, but that made a lot of money for the school. I
remember one year they had made $7000.00, not only in milk but in sale of cows. That
was quite a bit in those days. Why did Harry quit with the cattle?
Selma: I don’t know why he quit. He went into printing.
Esther: Yes, probably the print shop. Harry could do anything. He used to make the
most beautiful corsages out of material that looked like velvet or suede. He’d make these
corsages for the girls for weddings and things like that. Then he did the printing. Of
course, the print shop belonged to the school. And then he also did a lot of the
landscaping around there; he was in charge, and a lot of those trees that are there he
planted.
Selma: Our house was just next to Lewises, just north and right next to it.
Esther: Sundbos’ house used to be right next door to ours on the main road [Centre
Street]. Ours was the first house they built. They used us for guinea pigs, I think! They
put in flooring that wasn’t dry, and so we had quarter inch cracks. Oh, I did so many
things with that house, I just get sick every time I think of it. Homer was away most of
the summer so it was left to me to make the plans, and we didn’t have any architectural
plans, we had to draw it up ourselves on squared paper. And then the men would make a
mistake and then they’d say, “Well, you made a mistake.” And so I’d bring out my
squared paper and they had to count the squares and it was their mistake.
Oh it was a terrible summer. They ended up using the basement for a carpenter
shop, so we had all that sawdust upstairs, too. When we moved in we didn’t have the
water in, and where could we get the water then? It wasn’t in the kitchen tap anyway, it
was in the bathroom, so I guess that’s where we had to run and get it. So many things
happened that I don’t even like to think about it. Ours and what used to be the
Brygmanns were the first two houses to be built.
Selma: I painted houses—five houses on the outside, and some on the inside. And
you and I did it together, too. We painted the chapel on the inside.
Esther: Inside the motel.
Selma: The motel, yeah.
Esther: We didn’t work for the school then, we worked for the man who was in
charge, Bob McLeod. Bob and Ruth McLeod took over the cattle herd. He paid us,
because I remember he said he has to pay Selma more because she works harder and
faster, which was true.
Selma: I cleaned a lot of dorms in the summer, too, with my older daughter Vangie.
Esther: The young kids worked in the garden, to give them something to do so they
wouldn’t get into mischief. And how they hated it.
Selma: There was such a funny thing—Whittaker said something like we wished
they were peeing in the garden. They were working in the peas or something.
Esther: Whittaker was something else. I worked for him one day, and I thought I’d
never live through the day. “Well now, do this now Esther.” And I’d do that for awhile.
“Well now we’ll quit that.” It was when we first moved there, you see, and they were
trying to get money to pay for the place and he was taking names out of the telephone
directory and sending letters to them, regardless whether they were Christians or not.
Luckily after that first day they called me over to the office. I did something else, so I got
out of that work.
I worked for the high school, too. One spring the high school typing teacher’s
husband left her, and so she decided she’d better go, too. I don’t remember her name.
Grymaloski was the principal, and he asked me if I would come over and help them out,
so I did for those spring months. Then some of the ladies wanted to learn to type, so I
taught a typing class for a while in the evening. I forget who was in it—maybe Anne
Goertz. Then I did office work when Elbert Hiebert was in charge of the alumni. He was
also in charge of the choir tours. I think maybe I did it for a year or so. As Alumni
Secretary I answered all the letters and receipted all the donations. Lillian Diggins was
alumni secretary after me.
That was the spring we moved to Regina, where my husband was pastor of a Baptist
church. We went to Regina on a year’s leave of absence but never went back to
Caronport. The longer we were in Regina, the more Homer realized that this was the
place for him. They were very good to us. Built us a big parsonage, 2000 sq. ft. Used to
take Donna and me all Saturday morning to clean it. I was back to the church’s 50th
anniversary in August of 2004. I gave my testimony and cried all the way through it.
So Selma and I were in Caronport till about the same time. She and Harry went to
Swift Current in 1967.
Selma: Harry was doing landscaping in Swift Current. We were there three years
and then we went to Vancouver to work at this rest home. Harry was in charge of the
outside, a lot of the maintenance, and I was in charge of the laundry.
Women, Students, and Children
Esther: I always said I only remember the excellent students and the bad ones, but
not the good ones in between. The only time I really had much to do with the students
was once a year we had what we called Student Night and we divided up all the students
and designated them to the homes. It was a Friday evening, you see. We tried to serve
them hamburgers or pie or something like that. I remember a couple of times I spoke to
the high school kids when Ivy Moore was there. She asked me to come over and talk to
them.
Selma: She was the Dean of Ladies
Esther: Dean of High School Ladies. She was single.
They preferred to have single ladies on staff. You didn’t have to pay them so much.
Anyway, they didn’t want married women to work. Mrs. Hildebrand never worked, you
see, and so everybody was to follow her lead. Once my husband said to me after
something I had done, I don’t know what it was, “Now Mrs. Hildebrand would never do
that, would she?” I said, “Homer, if you want Mrs. Hildebrand, you go and get her! I’m
not Mrs. Hildebrand!”
But Inger Hildebrand was a real lady, you know. Everything she did was just
absolutely perfect. She set the table perfectly and she cooked divinely. You couldn’t ever
find fault with anything. Her children were perfect. That’s what made it hard for the rest
of us, I think. All except Paul. He wasn’t perfect. (laughs) But he turned out okay. He’s the
principal of one of the schools in Regina. I don’t know what Corinne does; she has a job
of some kind. Paul and Corinne are good friends of my daughter and her husband in
Regina. And Inger was really one of my best friends!
Mr. Hildebrand used to play hockey with the boys. One winter he broke his ankle
playing hockey. It bothered Inger to the extent that she partly had a nervous breakdown.
I think it was one of the first years we were there. Probably part of it was lack of
finances. Her aunt came and stayed with them. I went over to visit and Inger was flat on
her back in bed. She didn’t have a repeat of it, that I know of anyway.
After that he switched to curling. They made up a rink once and went down and
played a rink that Colin Thatcher was on.13 And he was a poor sport. They beat him and
so he grumbled, “mr-mr-mr.”
13
Actually, this was probably Ross Thatcher, Colin’s father.
Selma: I didn’t have much to do with the students either. My oldest son Jordan
graduated from Briercrest, from the Bible school. He was the first Caronport brat. He
was so tall. One time I couldn’t find him, he had got out of the house.
I have a picture where Jordan is driving off the roof of one of the buildings with a
sleigh. That must have been the winter of ’47.
Esther: Jordan was a go-getter. You couldn’t keep him still. Then Vangie was next.
And then Lionel was a friend of my son Dale’s, you see. I remember them playing outside
and Lionel was kicking Dale for dear life. I wonder how Dale responded.
Selma: My children were Jordan and Vangie and Lionel and Trevor and Claire—
Clarice, but she calls herself Claire now. When Claire was born, Vangie met Dr.
Hildebrand and she said, “Oh just another stupid brother.” Somebody had told her it was
a boy. Anyway it was a girl. Then she told Claire, “You know mother was thirty when
you were born. You could have been a mongoloid.”
Esther: I think I was thirty when Donna was born.
Selma: Well, now new mothers can be quite a bit older than that.
Esther: Joy Brygmann was thirty-six when Carol was born, and then she had
Audrey two years after that.
Selma: Well, Joy, wasn’t she a Ladies’ Dean?
Esther: Before she was married. But later on she taught in the grade school. She used
to be Joy Brown, but now she’s Joy Brygmann. She and he both died, both Joy and Odd.
Of course the kids had their ups and downs when they went to school. Once we had
a teacher who thought that he owned all of them, whether they were in school or out of
school, and he made the rule that the girls could not go over to the girls’ dorm. My
daughter Donna and her friend Marge had a friend over there—I think this was when
they were in grade seven or eight, so they would go over there and see their friend in the
dorm. This teacher caught them, so he took away their recommends.
To this day Donna says, “Why didn’t you go after him?” I can’t ever remember his
name. It wasn’t Muirhead: he was strict, but he was fair. Anyway, this other teacher took
away their recommends. Marge didn’t have any, but Donna did, so she was pretty
perturbed about it. Well, I told Donna the reason why I didn’t go after the teacher was
because there was a lady on ‘Port that was on the phone to the teacher with any little
thing, complaining, and I said didn’t want to be like her. So I said I just thought we’d just
take it and shut up. But that teacher didn’t last very long, he left inside of a year or
something. He really had no jurisdiction over those kids out of school. Don’t ask me why
they didn’t want Port kids visiting dorm kids. I don’t know. Nobody gave a reason.
Selma: Our kids were called Port Brats.
Esther: You see, they really expected the Port kids to be a little special.
Selma: There was no church, they just had to go to church with the students and go
to Sunday School. They had no young people’s group that they could really be a part of.
Esther: Port kids used to go to the gym and watch or play or whatever. And they
skated at the hangar.
Selma: And they played hockey, too.
Esther: Yeah, they played hockey. My husband liked to curl. They had a curling
sheet of ice.
Selma: Yeah, you and I, we curled, too. (Selma laughs; Esther moans)
Esther: Every night we hurried up and had supper so the kids could go to the gym to
play. Every night except Saturday. Saturday night I’d get the kids bathed and then we’d
play games with the two of them.
You know it was a good place for the kids to grow up, but you know there’s bad
kids there, too. Just because you’re in Caronport doesn’t mean you’re perfect.
Another woman is Freida Teichrob. Her husband Henry taught in high school—he
was the principal. He used to do the recording, he and his brother Pete. And they had a
little spot in the chapel, what we used to call the chapel, up in some place where it was
as cold as ice. They did all the recording on big platters, and then it went directly by
phone to Regina.
Selma: Remember when skunks had gotten into that part of the chapel, into the
entrance? They couldn’t use the chapel for a little while.
Esther: When Marilyn Zink was at Caronport, she fixed up this museum in the old
Hildebrand house, which used to be the fire hall. So when I heard about that I said,
“Would you like to have one of these old platters? You can have it, providing you’ll take
all our duets and put all of them on tape,” so they did. And then of course with the
equipment they had they cleaned it up so the songs didn’t have any noise on them. So I
have those. When my husband died we played one of his solos at his memorial service.
Marilyn Zink used to be Marilyn Bergren. Her folks, Ted and Grace Bergren, were
farmers up at Viscount, and so when they went home one spring after the winter, she
came and stayed with me. I taught her to sew.
I grew up on a farm where I had no company whatsoever. This was just wonderful
for me to have a lot of friends around, especially when my husband was away so much. I
could visit with Selma. I taught her to sew, and she used to help me if I had trouble with
the knitting, ‘cause I wasn’t very crazy about these fancy patterns, I just knit cable or a
plain stitch.
Audrey Lewis (nee Stevens) is the one who used to help me when I was stuck with
sewing. If I had a problem I used to go to her: “Audrey, what am I doing wrong?” She’d fix
it. I phoned her after I heard that her husband had died.
Selma: Audrey didn’t have any parents then, so Harry gave her away when they were
married, so she always called him dad. Then at our anniversary—our 50th maybe—she
said, “He called me his daughter, but I’m older than he is!”
Esther: I superintended their reception from the social club, because she didn’t have
any parents living. We got to know her because she worked in the post office and store
before she married Alvin.
CSSM and Arlington Beach
Esther: My husband got Parkinson’s. That’s why he had to leave the church in
Regina. One time he was waiting for me in the mall—I was having my hair done—and
this kid came and sat down beside him and noticed that he was shaking and said, “Do
you realize that there’s probably sin in your life?” I think there’s a story about it in there.
And so Homer lit into him and told him on no uncertain terms that was not biblical.
I typed all of the second book, Treasures of Truth. The first one they did at Caronport.
At that time he had a little spot on The Young People’s Hour reading these Treasures of
Truth when Moira Hunt14 was there, but then they cancelled the whole program. Out
here they cut it off because they didn’t think there was enough support for it, and after
they cut it off, they realized there were a lot of graduates out here that were listening. It
was on the FM Linden station. So it was gone then. I suppose that’s why I went to
14
Moira Brown of 100 Huntley Street.
Briercrest in the first place, because of the radio. I knew about the school because of the
radio program that came on every Sunday morning from a station in Regina.
Selma: Homer was with the Canadian Sunday School Mission.
Esther: Well he quit that after the first year.
Selma: Wasn’t he at the Beach, Arlington?
Esther: He was there the first couple of years. The mission was the first one there
and they had bought it. The Free Methodists bought it from CSSM, but they did
something with it. CSSM never had any money to do any improvements.
Selma: Well, we cooked there. We had to take the food with us.
Esther: Oh didn’t we! Don’t even talk about it. It just makes me ill every time I think
about it. It was so awful. The kitchen was so unhandy—and we didn’t have anything to
work with hardly. There were these big pots that we used to cook in, and after camp was
over, we put Vangie in one and Dale in the other and took their pictures.
I cooked there I guess a couple of summers, when Homer was still in charge. Then
that last summer he collapsed, he just took to his bed; he was done in. That was the
summer that Dale got run over with the truck. Carey Lees has been a missionary in Africa
for many years. He was one of the workers there that summer, and he always used to let
Dale ride with him in the truck. Dale was two years old and he saw Carey get into the
truck, so he ran for the truck, and the truck went right over him. Nobody could believe it
ever happened because all he had was a couple of little marks on his pelvis, but Ruth
Martens saw it happen. He lost his breath and was huffing and puffing. Henry was there
and we dashed into Govan. The doctor took x-rays and he was fine.
He was still sleeping in the crib, and the next morning he jumped up and he said,
“Mama, I ‘tiff.” Poor little kid. And I thought, “Oh Esther, there you were working for
everybody else and not looking after your child.” I was mad at myself. But Dale wasn’t
hurt really.
Conference Guests
Esther: You know we had a lot of good things that happened. We had conferences
both spring and fall. They don’t call them conferences any more. But we had wonderful
speakers and missionaries and we learned a lot through that. We didn’t have any guest
rooms in those days, so the speakers had to be housed amongst the staff. I just groan
when I think of putting two famous people in one bed.
They came from the States. One was Watson; he was an executive with TEAM. And
another one was Germaine. I’m not sure if those two came together, but they were put
together. Couldn’t get the rest of the staff to take them, so we did because we used to
enjoy having them, but to put two men in one bed, I die every time I think of it.
One missionary would get up in the service and talk about how he got up early in
the morning to pray and read his Bible. I said, “Yeah, you woke us all up, too.” He was in
our house and we were tired. We didn’t want to get up at 4:00, but he did. So he wasn’t
my favorite.
When we lived at the town of Briercrest in our first year of marriage, we even had T.
J. Bach in our apartment; he was one of the founders of TEAM. He thought it was terrible
that I didn’t have a typewriter, so the next time he came he brought me a typewriter.
We used to laugh because he would pray, but he always prayed with his eyes open.
And he wrote out his prayers, too. Well it’s typical Lutheran style, you know, to pray
with your eyes open. My parents were Lutheran and they always prayed with their eyes
open. So I find it hard to close mine, too.
Staying at Caronport
Esther: In spite of the hardships, I don’t ever remember wondering what we were
doing there. Once Homer had an opportunity to go with the Canadian Sunday School
Mission to Ontario, and I remember crying my eyes out. I didn’t want to leave Caronport.
He didn’t either, so it was all right.
Narrative: Irene Fender
Introduction
There is a small dormitory in Caronport called ”Fender Hall.” For many years it housed young men
who adopted the slogan, “Producing Fine Quality Husbands.” I wonder if the residents of Fender Hall
knew that its namesake was Briercrest’s first Dean of Men. Walter Fender had been a student at
Briercrest, then went farming after graduation. Later, Irene moved to Caronport with him when he was
invited to be Dean of Men, a position he held for 25 years. Irene worked at the restaurant when it was a
50s diner called the lunch counter, but her highest priority and greatest joy was being a wife and mother.
Her husband passed away many years ago and she now lives alone in Abbotsford, BC, near to her
daughters. This narrative introduces Mr. Fender’s wife, Irene, whom I interviewed in her home on
November 3, 2004.
Invited to Caronport
When my husband was invited to be Dean of Men at Briercrest, I remember him
thinking about it for quite some time. I don’t know if I was more certain than he was, but
I thought, well, the decision would have to be his. The best thing to do was to go and
talk to him about it.
Walter had been a student at Briercrest, but I didn’t know him then. I got to know
him after he graduated. We married in ’43. That’s so long ago, it’s hard for me to
remember all these things. I never was a student at Briercrest. I went out working,
started just finding jobs wherever I could find a job.
You know, Walter really was a farmer. We had a farm at Congress, Saskatchewan,
near Assiniboia. After we had children the school was closed in our district and we had
absolutely no place to send our kids to school. I often thought, “Well how is that gonna
work? Where are we gonna send our kids to school? How are our kids gonna get to
school?”
We stayed on the farm for just over three years after that. Two of our daughters,
Bernice and Bev, were born on the farm. Just before Bev was born, Mr. Hildebrand had
been corresponding with Walter back and forth about coming on staff. That took awhile,
because we were farming, we had three quarters of land, and that was the way we made
our living. But when the kids got older we had to make the move, and since Walter was
asked to come to Briercrest we thought, “Well that will answer our prayers concerning
our children going to school.” Our first daughter Bernice was about a year and a half
when we moved up to Caronport in 1946.
We were there at the school 25 years. He was a good dean. I said to him once,
“Always give the kids a second chance.” And I think that stuck with him for a long time,
because he wasn’t impossible with the kids, you know. He always said at the school he
was Dean of Men, but at home he said, “I’m Dean of Ladies,” because he had three girls.
I think he did a very good job while he was there, until he had his heart attack. After
that he slowed up and he wasn’t the same man. The doctor told him right away, “You’ve
had a severe heart attack, but if you watch it you can live for another 20 years.” I can’t
just remember what year that was. He died in ’81 and he had the heart attack 17 years
before that. So, he didn’t quite make 20. That was a hard time, going through that.
Mr. Hildebrand is going to be 93 this year.15 My husband was only two years behind
him and would have been 90 now. I can’t believe that, that he would be that old, because
he was a young man when he died, only 67. Seems almost impossible that the time goes
so fast.
Bev has a tape at her house where Walter and I were interviewed by one of the staff,
I’m not sure who it was at that time. It’s just a short tape.
Impressions of Caronport
The first time that we went to Caronport it was a big air force base. Mr. Hildebrand
had asked us to come there after they bought the school and look it over, and oh, it was
just one big building after another. We lived in the hangar when we went to Caronport! I
think that hangar is still there.16 There were quite a few buildings there and kind of a
bleak prairie. And the storms, the dust storms! They don’t have those anymore. They get
a lot of wind, though, but lots of rain, too.
We had lots of hard, hard winters. The first winter, the snow was right up to the
roofs. And I remember when we’d drive into Moose Jaw, the snow piled up on each side
of the highway and you could hardly see the cars driving. That’s how deep the snow was.
We had ice sculptures in the wintertime. It was amazing what they did!
15
This interview was done in 2004.
16 The hangar is currently used as the rink. It used to have a series of apartments around the outside
with entrances inside the hangar. These apartments were rented by the school as residences through the
1980s, but at the time of writing are used for hockey dressing rooms, a confectionary, “The Clothes Closet”
clothing exchange and community drop-in, storage, and music practice rooms. Mrs. Fender and I had a
long discussion about this during our interview.
The dairy was Homer Edwards’ specialty. He had one cow they said ended up in
some kind of palace in California, I think.17
I remember the big chapel. I think it is still standing.18 I remember Mr. Whittaker
said to Mr. Hildebrand, “Do you think we’ll ever fill this building?” And they sure did. Oh
yes. That chapel was full on Sunday mornings. The boys were up on the balcony, and the
girls, and some of the guys I think, were also down on the first floor.
Working at Caronport
The school did not have married women working. Mr. Hildebrand was against that,
I think. If you look back at the yearbooks, I don’t think you’ll see any married women.
Mrs. Muirhead, well, she was the nurse. Otherwise they were all single women then. I
don’t think they hired married women as such until they would have them come on staff
if their husbands were there first. A lot of the staff were married men and that’s how
married women came in. There were some of the married women that thought, “Well,
why can’t we do something?” But I know for a long time Mr. Hildebrand wanted the
women to stay home and tend to their families. He liked to see the mothers with the
children in the home. That was their first responsibility. And that was important in that
time, too.
Of course, that’s all I ever did, until I started working at that lunch counter. And I
worked there for a good many years. It got so busy down there that they needed help.
Quite often we were short of help. I was with that until we moved out West. I think I
17 “The Cow Palace is known as the ‘home’ of the Grand National Rodeo, Horse and Stock Show”
[cited 13 March 2007]. Available from http://www.cowpalace.com/index.html.
18 The
“big chapel” is still standing, is now considered small, and is used as a multi-purpose building
called “The Landing.”
was the manager for a couple of years there, but it was a small place. We opened up at
six o’clock in the morning and we had customers come at six o’clock in the morning. By
the time we got down there, there were truckers waiting; they’d drive as far as Caronport
and then they’d rest, sleeping in their trucks. As soon as the lunch counter opened up
then they had their breakfast. So it was a very busy place.
I really didn’t work full-time until my youngest daughter Margie was in grade eight.
When they asked me to manage it I said, “Well, I wouldn’t mind managing it, but I still
have a daughter at home,” and I wanted her to feel free to be with me whenever she
wanted to. Every day she’d come down to the lunch counter, be there for a little while,
and then she’d go home. As long as she saw mom, I guess. But I was usually home in time
for supper—I made the meals.
Usually I was at the lunch counter by 6:30 in the morning. When I managed it, I
would stay for one whole shift, until I’d get called back. If it got terribly rushed then
they’d call, “Can you come down?” But it was a great life.
As far as students were concerned, we had quite a lot of students in the home. I
guess a mixture of guys and girls. We had three girls and they were always bringing their
friends home, so we had quite a lot that way.
I remember the names of a lot of students. Oh yeah. I remember so many girls. I
remember. They were students. Nice kids, really nice kids. Lorraine Jost was one. In fact,
I think I was better at names than my husband was! But I sure am not today. But I got to
know the students pretty well, their names at least.
Those were good years, even if they were a little hard. But nothing really hard. I
enjoyed it so much. I just loved it, just being a mother there, and just being part of the
staff, the ladies, and things like that. Anyway, it was a good life. A very good life. I
enjoyed it.
Women and Men of Caronport
Some of the ladies from Caronport are here in Abbotsford. Esther Edwards. Laura
Wellwood. Audrey Lewis. Tina Blatz.
Tina was the school nurse. Delivered babies, though she didn’t deliver any of my
babies. Bernice and Bev were born in Assiniboia, and Marjorie was born in Moose Jaw.
Tina was only there one or two years and then she went to Germany to Black Forest
Academy. So she didn’t deliver many babies, but I think she delivered one of the Shauf
babies.
Freida Teichrob. She and her husband were on staff. Henry was a high school
teacher, a very good high school teacher. I think they were there about ten years. Very
capable woman. They had three children. Their oldest daughter is with Trinity Western
on staff there. Linda. What’s her married name now? Anyway, Linda Teichrob. Very
brilliant girl. Henry and Frieda’s second child died. Then they have a boy and he’s a
pastor, but I’m not sure where he is.
My daughter Bev and her husband Wayne live here in Abbotsford. Wayne works for
the city here in Abbotsford. Bev is a music teacher, and she’s also had a women’s
ministry, but this year she’s not doing it because she wants to finish her course in
women’s ministry, and if she stays with it till next June she says she can graduate. She’s
done very well. She says, “I’ve done this late in life, but I just love it.” The church, Seven
Oaks Alliance, is going to be calling on her many, many times after this year. Already she
works in the church quite a bit.
I never met Annie Hillson. I knew of her, and I did hear her speak, but by the time
we came on the scene as staff, she was pretty aged. She would have been a woman of
maybe 80 then. Mrs. Whittaker was about the same age. I think I did see her once or
twice. Those two ladies were the ones that prayed Caronport, or prayed the school into
existence. They were the prayer warriors.
And Mr. Whittaker, I saw him quite often; he was at Caronport a lot. He was the
one that got Caronport, you know. He had to talk to the Saskatchewan government that
they would like to buy it. I guess Mr. Hildebrand had a lot to do with it, too, but those
two they did the work, they did the job there.
I met Margaret Rusk, but I didn’t really know her that well. I can’t remember where
she taught. Did she teach at the town of Briercrest? That was before my time. She had a
brother from Briercrest—Clarence Rusk. I’ve forgotten some of those people.
Mrs. Muirhead was the nurse in 1950. I think that was the first year they had a
nurse, but they may have had somebody in ’47 already. Miss Martin was First Aid.
Erna Neufeld was the Dean of Women. She was a single lady all her life. She was in
charge of the ladies, and Walter was in charge of the boys. They both had assistants—
one for the high school boys and a lady for the high school girls. Well, Erna and Walter
had to work together, with meetings and things like that. But I think she thought many
times that my husband was too easygoing on the boys and she, she was so hard. I don’t
know—I don’t want to be critical—but she was hard on the girls we figured, her rules in
the dorm, and things like that. I want to be careful what I say. But she sure hung in there
for a good many years. She was there a long time.
Mrs. Clements was also the Dean of Women after Erna Neufeld. She was a
wonderful lady.
Erna Rempel and her sister Gertie were both in the kitchen, helping in the cooking
area. Gertie married Harold McKay.
We knew the teachers, yes. Mr. Swenson was one of the top teachers; and Mr.
Edwards; and Mr. Hildebrand. They were the three main ones, I think.
Browsing Yearbooks
I don’t know who else was on staff at that time. You didn’t get to know everybody.
I’d have to look up some of the Optics19 in the early years. I have them right from the
beginning, from the time that they started making the yearbooks; I think that was in
1947.
I’ve got two ’71s! One belongs to one of the girls; I know because it says, “Dear Marj”
inside. My daughter Bev said, “Mom, don’t you ever, ever give these Optics away.” I got
them all up to 1974, and then I stopped buying them because I didn’t know anything
about the school anymore. Some of the yearbooks I really should never have bought,
because we just didn’t know anybody. ’79-’80 must be the last one I bought. ’66 was way
past when we were there. You can get a lot of information from the Optics. You could
spend hours looking at them.
Mrs. Olson was a married woman, but then, she was widowed. She worked in the
laundry. The Optic was dedicated to her in 1962.
Miss Heron was the librarian. The yearbook was dedicated to her in 1956:
Miss Heron has enjoyed rewarding public service as a public school teacher in
our province. She joined the staff of Briercrest Bible Institute in 1950 to be our
librarian, and has worked faithfully in her quiet, unassuming way to make our
library a delightful and inviting place to study.20
19
Optic was the first name of the Briercrest yearbook. It is now called Eyewitness.
20
Optic, 1956.
She was at Caronport right from the beginning as far as I knew, but I think she fades out
after a few years.
Gordon Diggins. Julian Grymaloski. Harry Penner. Mr. Amundsen. Eliason. Sundbo.
Fender. Laura Wellwood’s husband Tom, and Irvine Rodine live here. Irvine’s first wife
died and now he’s remarried. I don’t know where the Engstroms are. But he was very,
very good with his hands, drawing and things like that, you know. And there’s this group
of single staff.
Joe Shakotko was my brother-in-law. He’s gone. His wife Gladys, my sister, is gone.
Mae Pomeroy was on staff. She lived in the town of Briercrest before she was
married and worked in the laundry. But she was widowed while she was at Caronport.
Her husband was on high school staff: a French teacher.
My sister, Isabel, went to Caronport. Our maiden name was Reimche. She’s a Mrs.
Gogel now, living in Regina. Merla Gogel is her daughter.21
Joan and Jean Little were twins, but I don’t think they came the same time. They
were from our home district. I think Joan was only there one year. Jean kept on going.
The Optic will give you information. It usually does. I wonder if the other ladies, Esther
and Selma, have their yearbooks.22
Miss Owens. I wonder if she’s still living.23
Gordon Olmstead. They’re still on campus, Gordon and Eloise.
21
Merla Gogel is a missionary with SEND International.
22
This is Esther Edwards and Selma Penner.
23
Lillian Diggins says she is not.
There’s a picture of my husband in one of the yearbooks. He got the awfulest [sic.]
haircut. They had the barber right there at the school, Harold McKay. Walter didn’t
want to run and go into Moose Jaw, so he just had his hair cut there, and when I look
back at it I thought, why did I ever allow that? Why didn’t he go into town and get a
decent haircut? Esther Edwards said that Homer refused to get his hair cut at Caronport.
Well, he was wise. I wasn’t.
Well, there’s just so much to remember. I’m sure that they’ve got a copy of each
yearbook at Caronport. They should have if they don’t. It’s history! You could spend hours
and hours looking at those again.
Narrative: Lillian Diggins
Introduction
Lillian Diggins was the youngest participant – only in her 70s, compared with the other four women
who were all in their 80s. Lillian came to Briercrest at Caronport as a student in 1948. She returned as a
single staff person after graduation. Her husband came in 1950, Lillian’s final year of college and the first
year students were allowed to go on a date. He remembers pushing her and her date out of a snowbank to
get off campus. The Diggins stayed on staff for approximately 40 years. While her kids were small, Lillian
worked at home. When they were older she became Alumni Secretary, and it is still a joy for her to meet
Briercrest Alumni wherever she goes. Lillian knows more than most about Briercrest’s former students.
After four decades of study and service at Briercrest, Lillian and her husband Gordon moved to
Abbotsford, BC, where they now live.
I interviewed Lillian with her husband Gordon in their home in Abbotsford, BC on November 2,
2004. Though Gordon was part of the conversation, I was aiming to feature the women, so have written
this narrative in Lillian’s “voice” with a few comments and footnotes from Gordon.
School Days
My first year at school (’48-49), we were in a dorm that had no partitions. There
were four sections in the dormitory, with no partitions. We had lockers all along the
wall, and curtains hanging from them so your clothes were hung up behind that, and
there were beds out from that, but there were no partitions at all. That was F-dorm.
Later it was a boys’ dorm, but at that time one side was boys and one side was girls. The
laundry was downstairs. D-dorm had married couples and single girls in it.
Miss Neufeld was our Dean of Ladies. She also taught Etiquette. She was there
before I was. I never got into trouble with her at all. I know a lot of the kids did, but I
didn’t. When the rules were there she went by the book. Yeah, she was a stickler, but I
never had any problem with her. In fact, my roommate and I lived right next door to her.
In second year or third year, I can’t remember what year it was, they put us in the high
school girls’ dorm, right next to Miss Neufeld, and we never did find out whether they
thought we acted like the high school kids, whether they thought we could be some help
to them, or whether she wanted to keep her eye on us. But we really never had any
problem with her at all.
They didn’t used to let the girls babysit during study hour. We couldn’t be out of the
dorm for any reason. They could babysit on Saturdays or Friday nights or something like
that. Two hours we had to study, from 7:30 to 9:30 or maybe 7 to 9, and then about 15
minutes of riot hour, and then you had to wash up and have the lights out at 10:00.
Some days riot hours24 were quite the thing. When I was on single staff we lived in B
dorm. It isn’t there anymore. Anyhow, when it was time to wash up, the girls all gathered
in the washroom and they’d be sitting around the floor, talking and we had a great time!
In my first year one of the gals in our room was from Main Centre, and her mom was
always sending her great big care parcels. There was a street light right at the end of the
dorm there, so after lights were out we’d go down to that end of the room and have our
lunch by the light of the street light. That was where I got to like cheese and dill pickle
sandwiches. So we had fun.
It was my second year that we were in high school dorm with the high school kids,
‘cause they had partitions in the dorm then, but only partway up. And we had bunk beds,
so we lay on the top bunks and we’d talk all the way down the hall. Oh, it was fun. And
then at the end room their heads would go down and then the next one and you knew
Miss Neufeld was coming. I remember one time kids from downstairs came up and
pulled my mattress out and put it out in the hallway. These were high school kids and
they were always trying to do something with these Bible school kids that were in their
dorm. So I just laid down on it, and the kids whispered, “What are you gonna do when
Miss Neufeld comes?” I said, “Oh, I guess if she wants me to go in the room, you put it
out here.” Then Miss Neufeld came along and all the kids were in our room: What’s she
gonna say? And she says, “I really think you should get back in your room. The night
watchman might fall all over you if you stay out here.” They were so disappointed ‘cause
they thought I was gonna get into trouble. Oh we had fun that year! I don’t know
whether we did them any good or not, but we had a lot of fun with them.
24
“Riot hour” was a time slot for washing up in the evening.
Preaching
Students came for three years. It was a three year course. Basically, the men would
either be a missionary or a pastor, I think. And with the women I guess it would be the
wife of a pastor or a missionary!25
There wasn’t the variety of ministries that there are now. Like when Gordon went
up to a missionary statesman after he had given quite a challenging message, and he said
to him, “I am not a preacher, but is there anything I can do on the mission field without
being a preacher?” The missionary answered, “Nope. Preach first. That’s it.” When
Gordon mentioned that to Claire Gifford, a missionary, and he said, “Oh! Where was I
when you were wanting to know that?” There’s so much you can do on the mission field,
but in those days it just seemed like that was the idea, you had to preach. Often, I know
when Mr. Budd was on the field, there were so many single ladies that he spend a good
deal of his time doing things for these lady missionaries, which kept him from teaching,
and where if somebody had been there in a maintenance field they could have done that
work and that could have been their ministry.
That’s what Dr. Hildebrand said to Gordon after he’d been there a year. Dr.
Hildebrand came to him and he said, “Well, what do you think of the place? Are you
happy being here?” And he said, “Well, yeah, I enjoy it, but I’ve had Bible school, I really
think I should be doing something different.” And Dr. Hildebrand said, “Don’t ever feel
that way. If you weren’t here to do it, we’d have to get somebody else. Your work is just
as important as the teachers.” And that settled him and he was quite happy to stay there.
GORDON: I think you’re right there. I thought I’d go there and come out as a pastor or a
missionary. I think that was the general feeling. And then sometimes the longer you were there you
realized maybe it was something else.
25
But he needed that emphasis. But that seemed to be the idea, if you couldn’t preach or
teach there wasn’t much to do. It really is too bad, because now there’s such a variety of
places that you can use your gifts.
You had to tell a story first year,26 second year you had to preach in class, and third
year you had to preach in chapel. I would think it would have been pretty close to the
‘60s before they stopped. I imagine they wouldn’t have enough time to get everybody in.27
It wasn’t just the men that had to preach, we had to, too.
I might have been nervous. It’s such a long time ago that I forget. I still remember
what I preached on, though. I think I preached on the donkey that the Lord rode. And
submissiveness and being willing to let God use you. Had something to do with the
donkey, but I can’t remember just exactly the outline. Second year you preached in class.
One of Gordon’s classmates, Ron Slade—he was in prison camp with Eric Liddel.
His folks were missionaries over in China. Well he got up there, he was a card anyhow,
and told what not to do when you tell a story. That was in Child Evangelism class. He
wore two different coloured socks and he put his foot up on the railing in the chapel. Oh,
he was quite the character. They live in Hamilton now.
Courtship
Lillian: Gordon came in ’50-’51, my graduating year. That was interesting those days.
Gordon: I noticed her. But I was a lowly first year. She was a third year. So, that
year in the spring, the first year that they let students go on a date, here this guy was
26 GORDON: And then somewhere on the line you [students] gave your [their] testimony over the
radio. Well, the boys did, anyway. LILLIAN: I don’t remember that.
GORDON: I think even just after our day some of the fellows didn’t have to preach because they
run out of time. In those days there were a lot of missionaries came, and they used to take a lot of the
chapel services, too.
27
taking her out on a date and I was pushing them through a snow drift so they could get
off campus!
Then she came back later after graduation and I didn’t let her get away twice. I’d
been away at home for two weeks and when I came back the other guys I worked with
said, “Hey, there’s a new girl in the office there. We’ve got her all picked out for you.” I
said, “Who is it?” “Well, she went to school here awhile ago.” That’s when I found out it
was Lillian. I wasn’t going to let her get away again. I don’t remember our first date or
anything. I guess it was probably with Richie Anderson and Ruth Lutzer.
Lillian: Maybe we went down to Old Wives Lake with a bunch of the single staff.
Somebody lived down there. Gertie McKay’s sister and Mrs. Lewis’s brother. Gertie’s
sister and Wilf Stevens were married. So a bunch of single staff went down. After I came
back and I started going with Gordon, Dr. Hildebrand said, “I think the next single girl
that I employ, I’m going to make sure they promise that they will stay at least two years.”
I worked in the office for two years, but I was married before two years was up. There
were quite a number of them that got married after they were on staff.
Gordon: She got called in the office by Mr. Hildebrand because I used to go pick up
the mail and had to drive down to Caron to meet the train, so I used to take her once in
awhile, and then I guess we went too often?
Lillian: I don’t remember what it was all about.
Work and Marriage
I thought I was going to Africa when I left Bible school, but that didn’t work out and
I wrote Dr. Hildebrand and told him, because he’d been one of my references, and he
wrote back almost immediately and asked me to come and work in the office. I just
didn’t have any peace about Africa. I started out with the application and got the first
preliminary, but I couldn’t finish up the final papers. I just couldn’t do it. And finally the
Lord gave me real peace about going to BBI, and I had that peace throughout the years
there. Not that it was always easy. We worked there nearly forty years. I think Dr.
Hildebrand kept his staff longer when they did get married.
I worked about a year after we were married, and then I went back to work part
time after our youngest, Paul, was in kindergarten. So I’d be home when they got home.
Paul, he’s our baby. He’d love to have me call him that! There’s about six years between
Paul and the oldest, nineteen months between the girls. Laurel was born in ’57, Paul was
born in ’63.
I did work for the bookstore a little bit, ‘cause we lived right next door to the
bookstore where the guest rooms were. When they got new books in, they gave them to
me to read to see if I felt that there was anything that they didn’t want on their shelf. I
did that ‘cause I could do that at home. But then I started working in the alumni office
just two or three hours a day. Gordon says I started marking papers or something for
awhile there, ‘cause I could do that at home. Then when Paul got going to kindergarten I
started going over to the office. I don’t remember doing that. I tell Gordon, “You gotta
stay with me,” because he’s got a better memory than I.
I worked in the high school for two or three years, in the office, and I really enjoyed
those high school kids. Some of them just seemed lonely; they’d come in when they had a
spare and were supposed to be working. They would come occasionally, not too often,
but there were one or two that just seemed to want to talk to somebody. I enjoyed that.
But most of the time I was working with the alumni. So I got to know them, and I
still, if I find somebody that’s gone to Briercrest, I immediately want to know if they’re
still on the mailing list. They used to call me “Miss Alumni” because I was always looking
for lots of alumni. But I really enjoyed that, working there.
I don’t know how many years I worked with the alumni. I worked with Elbert
Hiebert and Les Leskewich. (Bert Hiebert was in my class at school. He also taught vocal
and sang in a quartet.) I think I worked with Homer Edwards a little bit. I can’t
remember who else was Alumni President. But I did enjoy working with them, and I
worked on the alumni news. In fact, in the early years I did the alumni news – the Echo it
was called then. I put it all together. It was sort of overall everything, including little
articles. It was people that sent in notes like they do in the Passport, articles that
somebody’d be asked to write on a certain theme, and reports of activities on campus.
Then it went to the Alumni News, which was just alumni news. And then they
changed it to the Passport, combined it, because they had another paper that they sent
out, but not as regular as the alumni news. They combined the two of them. The Echo
originally was the paper that we sent out, and then it was the Alumni News, and then the
Passport.
I think I remember compiling all of the Echoes in the archives, getting them together
for the archives. They had them in the library, and there were extra copies of different
ones, and we got them all so there was one copy of everything. Everybody kind of worked
on it when Marilyn Zink was in charge. Everybody tried to find as many of the old things
as possible.
When I saw the alumni work sort of dwindling away I thought, “Oh no!” But
Michelle [Ernst] is doing a super job. Jackie [(Almeida) Kroeker] did, too. Jackie did very
well when she was in there. Alumni are our biggest supporters.
I found the alumni work was so rewarding. I just loved it, keeping in touch and
seeing where they’re working. Even still I get a thrill when I see one of our alumni, even if
I don’t know them at all, that’s a pastor here or [someone] leading a group here—it just
thrills me to see what God is doing through our alumni. It was important then, and I still
get a real thrill out of finding out. Or when I go to a church that I don’t know and I’m
almost disappointed if I don’t find somebody there that has been at Briercrest. But it was
very rewarding, just keeping in touch with the kids, and having them come back and tell
you how much they enjoy the alumni news, and it was just a very enjoyable job. I don’t
know of any one particular thing, but it was just a delight to work with them and keep
in touch with them.
Memorable Women
I remember the first time that they asked me to be on the women’s social committee.
I had just barely gotten there. They were sitting around, and I was supposed to be
secretary and I was supposed to take minutes, and they’d talk about Inger this and Irene
that and I said, “Whoa! I don’t know who these people are! All I know of them is Mrs.
Fender, Mrs. Hildebrand.” And they said, “Well, Lillian, you’ll have to get to know us by
our first name. You can’t call us Mrs. all the time.”
I don’t know whether they called me Lillian or Cookie. When I was at Bible school I
was Cookie all the time, ‘cause my last name was Cook. A lot of people didn’t even know
what my name was. I remember at our church one time, Wally Grip was in a quartet and
he was introducing. He got all the Briercrest people to stand up, and then he started
naming them all. He’d go by my girlfriend and I and go on to somebody else, and we were
getting really nervous wondering, “What’s he gonna do now?” ’cause he was a character.
Finally he says, “And there is Cookie!” because he couldn’t remember my name! It was so
funny.
Because my dad got called Cookie, I never got called that anywhere but at Briercrest.
So, if I heard that name I automatically knew it had to be somebody from Briercrest. One
day my roommate’s nephew, Stan Hindmarsh, came up to me in the office—he was
student body president then—and walked by the desk there and whispered, “Hi
Cookie.” I said, “Oh yeah, I know, your dad’s been talking to you.” He thought that was
so funny.
Mrs. Whittaker was a neat lady. A very stately lady. Lots of fun. She had her own
opinions, and she could keep Mr. Whittaker in place. He was a real go-getter! But she
could kind of hem him in a bit, I think. It seemed to me that in her quiet way she could
keep him from going overboard on a few things, ‘cause he could get off on tangents
sometimes. But I knew her better than Mrs. Hillson.
I think we heard Mrs. Hillson speak or give a testimony or something. Maybe
Gordon didn’t, because I was there two years ahead of him. I don’t remember Mrs.
Hillson being any other way but old.28 Well, Mrs. Whittaker, too. I always thought she
28 Lillian
was commenting on a picture in Wind in the Wheatfields.
was old. But when I went to Bible school I thought anybody that was 50 and older was
old! I think they were about the same age. Mrs. Whittaker was very determined—she
knew what she wanted and she wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind. I think Mrs. Hillson,
to me, was a quieter woman. The two of them were a good working pair. They were real
prayer warriors. I think that was the basic part of getting the school started. I could be
wrong, but I kind of think Mrs. Whittaker was the leader.
The Whittakers lived in Moose Jaw. They lived right down by the river. Their house
was close to being flooded a few times. Fortunately they were up a little higher so the
river was down. They lived in southern Moose Jaw. He had quite a few stores, including
Moose Jaw and Briercrest. Gordon remembers Gordon Gruchy mentioned something
about all the stores that Whittaker had had. Grocery stores, I think.29
Margaret Rusk. She married a Baptie. Mrs. Baptie lived in Calgary, so I only saw her
at conferences and stuff. Her brother lived in Briercrest, Clarence Rusk—later in Moose
Jaw. She wasn’t at the school by the time I got there.
Mrs. Hildebrand. She was such a stately model of a wife, of a Christian woman, a
mother. You just looked up and thought, “Oh, I wish I could be like her.” She was really a
special lady.
I can still remember David Hildebrand just after he’d come home after finding out
that he had the cancer. His throat was just raw, but he was working in the store, and he
was just so bright and cheery and I thought, “Oh, man, what a kid.” From then on he
seemed to be just really special. But he did have a very special nature and he loved the
GORDON: I think so. I don’t think he had any when we got there. When I got there Art Sundbo
was running the store at Caronport. But who was in there when you first started? I think Art and Oscar
Eliason just took a year of Bible each, then they asked them to go on staff.
29
Caronport kids and he did all he could with them when he was on staff. He and Jeannie
were a very special couple.
And then, well I guess there were some of the staff wives when I started working
there. To me they were way up there somewhere, I didn’t feel like I was really capable of
working with them. There was Mrs. Fender and Mrs. Penner and some of the ladies that
we worked with. When Gordon and I were going together after we were on staff, we
would go to Mrs. Penner’s living room—they let us have it for a Friday evening for date
night.
Mrs. Wipf taught missions, and Mrs. Barsness, of course. Adelma Beagle taught in
CHS. There were several lady teachers in CHS and elementary school.
Mrs. Sundbo was a special lady. Beatrice. She was so good with our second
daughter, ‘cause she was a feisty little thing. She was small, but she didn’t want people to
think she couldn’t do everything, and she had one or two teachers that kind of put her
down.30 Now she’s five one or something, because I’m only five four and a half and she’s
quite a bit shorter than me. She married a fellow that’s about six foot I guess.
One time, thinking of Mrs. Sundbo, a policeman came into the class to talk to the
kids about safety when they were in public school, and I don’t know what he was talking
about, but he asked Kathy a question and he says, “And you, Shorty, what do you think?”
And Mrs. Sundbo says, “Right away I saw Kathy’s eyes begin to flash and said, ‘But you
should see her play baseball!’” and that just quietened it down. She just had that way
about her.
GORDON: I wouldn’t say they put her down. I imagine it was comical when she was in grade one
and she had to go and write something at the blackboard and she could hardly reach it. And the teacher
kind of, according to Kathy, laughed at her, and oh that didn’t go right.
30
She was neat. She used to have the kids come over to her place for tea parties after
school. She had them all day, but she’d have them over for tea parties on a Saturday or
something. She was a wonderful teacher, she really was, and a very special lady. Both Mr.
and Mrs. Sundbo. They lost—was it four of their children? They wrote Treasures in Heaven.
You’d go over there when they’d lost one of their children and Mr. Sundbo would be
there comforting you! They just were able to take everything. They were a very special
couple. They lost one before they got to Caronport—run over just before they came to
school, and I think that sort of cinched it that they were to come to school as students.
They had a boy die with leukemia when he was only four. Then they had a still-born
baby. Then they adopted a boy, and he was killed when he was about 18 or 19 in a truck
at a train crossing.31
I don’t know how many years after that Mrs. Sundbo died, too. They used to go and
visit as stewardship for the school. One year one of the students from our school had
been working as a flagman on a construction site, and he was hit and killed. They went
to visit the parents and the father said, “But people just don’t understand.” Mr. Sundbo
said, “Yes, but we do,” and they told them their story, and that couple were totally
changed, they felt somebody else understood, somebody else had gone through this.
With their testimony so many times they just were there when God wanted them. They
were just a special couple.
I remember Dale Dirksen’s dad, Henry, when his wife died. I went up to him and I
started to try to say I was sorry or something and he said, “Well, I guess maybe God
GORDON: They were hauling gravel and they were told that there were no trains gonna be coming
through that day, so they weren’t bothering stopping, and a train did come through.
31
figured he wanted another soprano in his choir up in heaven.” I thought that was so neat.
Later he married the Dean of Women, Elaine Wolf.
Tina Blatz lives in Menno Hall (in Abbotsford). I didn’t know her as well as the
others, because she was Dean of Women at school in Briercrest, I think. She was in
Germany when I came, at Black Forest.
Frieda Teichrob. I haven’t seen her for awhile. They were with Revival Fellowship
for awhile, too. I think maybe they still do occasionally. He’s sort of a manager of
complexes out here. She’s a very good speaker, too, but I never knew that when she was
at Caronport. There wasn’t the opportunity. But when she got into Revival Fellowship
she was very good, did a lot of speaking. They weren’t students. He was high school
principal.
Joy Brown, who married Odd Brygmann, was a teacher. They were married when we
went to school, so I don’t really know too much about them before that. She taught our
kids in the elementary school. She was a very nice person. She kind of had her favorites in
the elementary school. We had two kids and one got along with her and the other one
didn’t. Laurel seemed to be able to do whatever she wanted. She could chew gum, she
could talk, she could do anything. And our other daughter, I don’t know whether it was a
personality clash or what, but she said, “I just have to wiggle my nose and I’m accused of
chewing gum.” Our second daughter was a perfectionist, and maybe she saw things
differently, but other people felt Joy had her favourites.
But then she was an excellent teacher. She was a very bubbly person. I think she
taught a lot of the kids that had gone through the school there. She taught grade 7 and 8,
I think, and had the top class. She was principal of the elementary school.
One thing she used to say to the kids: if she asked them something and they started
giving her an answer and she thought it was an excuse, she’d say, “And they all began
with one accord to make excuse.” She would quote that to them so many times. At a big
reunion, Monday morning was for the staff kids, and they made up a song about Mrs.
Brygmann. It was so funny. And her daughters, Cheryl and Audrey, said, “Well if you
think she was like that at school you should have been at home, it was just the same.” I
think I have it somewhere. I’m so glad we went to that reunion for the staff kids, because
it was just hilarious. I think that reunion was in ’86, it was a homecoming. It was the first
big reunion that they had of the reunions. Such gorgeous weather that weekend. They
opened up Besant Park just for everybody from the school to come.32
Mrs. Grace Bergren was a very sweet lady. Just a lovely lady. She worked at the
lunch counter, which everybody was surprised at, that she would work down there
because she seemed so quiet. She did a super job managing the lunch counter down there
for awhile, but she was a homebody. Don’t know too many stories about her. Just she
was always there, helping wherever there was anything being done, any suppers being
done, anybody needed anything she was just there. They were a neat couple. They lived
in the hangar when they first came.
We lived up there when we were first married. I can remember the first winter,
because there were no washrooms in the apartments, you had to go to the other side of
the skating rink to go to the washroom. And if you had to go at night, quite often you’d
GORDON: Yeah, that was a homecoming, but you’re thinking when they opened up the park was
in October. That was another something that they had in the fall.
32
get by those big barrels and a cat’d come jumping out and bats flying around. Eeee! Later
they got washrooms in them, but that was interesting.33
I spent many hours in Esther Edwards’ kitchen talking to her. My roommate,
Loretta Hindmarsh, was going with Homer’s brother, so we used to go and visit them
quite often. Homer’s brother was his student. They married and went to Aruba as
missionaries for awhile and she was never better and he was never worse, so they came
back and he was on a stretcher.
The houses in Aruba had slots, you could see down through the floor, and you had to
be careful where you placed your furniture so the legs didn’t fall through. They said she
was a real hell-fire preacher. One time while she was preaching the kerosene fridge
below exploded, and it was just red all over the top of it. They lost everything pretty
much except a few wedding pictures that they found floating in the water.
Bruce Hindmarsh, that’s Loretta’s nephew. His dad was Doug Hindmarsh. Doug and
his sister Doreen came as students. Doreen married a doctor out in Delta, I think. And
there was Loretta. And Cecil. Cecil’s son Stan is the one that owns the seniors’ home
where Dr. Hildebrand is, and Stan’s the one that called me Cookie. And then there’s Art
33 The following bit of dialogue was interesting, and even important as a theme, but it didn’t fit the
narrative easily, so I’ve preserved it here as a footnote.
GORDON: The old flour shed. Well, the old-timers know what that is. They used to be able to back the
truck in there to unload the flour and store it in there. They had little tables up the side off the ground. And
then they’d have tin around the legs so the mice couldn’t crawl up. Later they made it into suites.
LILLIAN: Dirksens lived there. There was a single gal lived in there, too. She used to live in Napean,
Ontario. She lived down there near Bob Rices.
GORDON: Oh yeah, she worked in the mailroom. She writes you at Christmas or something. She came and
worked in the office for a while. I remember helping the guy that brought the furniture there—it was a
furniture moving truck. They had a harness that they put on their back and he had big trunks there, and
he’d sit on the trunk and strap this thing on, and so I thought I’d better try that thing. I guess once you get
used to it it’s alright, but I had more trouble with it more than when I was holding it at the front.
who is a doctor in Saskatoon. The oldest one was Elmer. The Hindmarsh home was my
home away from home because they were close in Assiniboia.
Jean Barsness (Jean Reimer) was one of my neighbours. Jean and her sister Joan lived
right next to me as a high school student that year we were in the high school dorm.
That’s where I really got to know them.
I was in the office when we got word that Gil Reimer had been killed,34 and I sent a
telegram to them using the verse in Deuteronomy, “underneath are the everlasting arms,”
and she said when she opened it up and she read the reference, Bette-Jean said, “Oh, I
know that! It says God’s arms are under us.” It was quite neat. She’s been very special
ever since.
The students just loved Jean to bits, and she was able to direct so many kids into
mission work or into Christian work, whatever. She was an excellent teacher, just an
excellent person. And now she’s finding it hard to let go, because everybody wants her to
do this and that and the other, and she’s on the go so much. I don’t know how she can
keep going at the pace she goes. Whenever she goes to speak at any group, whether it’s
men or women, it’s her testimony and her messages and her grasp of the Word of God,
it’s just deep.
I stood up for Henry and Ev Budd when they were married. They were in St.
Catherines.
We knew Terry Wolverton’s parents really well, Bud & Marge. We got to know
them through the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission. Years ago Wycliffe Bible
Translators used to have their Summer Institute of Linguistics at Briercrest. Bud and
Gil and Jean Reimer were missionaries in Panama. After Gil was killed, Jean was invited to teach
missions at Briercrest, so she and her two children moved to Caronport.
34
Marge were there for SIL. They were married then and had their oldest child, Kit. I think
they went to London after. I knew Marge from Hamilton. So it’s kind of interesting the
way it all worked out.
Women’s Identity and Roles
I was the plumber’s wife. There’s still a man out here in Abbotsford, and he never
knows me until Gordon comes: “Oh, now I know who you are.” You were sort of your
husband’s mate, and that was who you were known as, more or less. There was Mrs.
Wipf, and then Mrs. Barsness who had just a great deal of influence on women getting
out into the ministry. They had a tremendous ministry there at the school. Marilyn Baron
was another one who had a real influence. She was a dean in the high school, and she was
just a super dean. The girls just loved her to bits. Dale Dirksen’s stepmother [Elaine
Wolf] did a good job, too, there as a single woman. But I think most of the wives were
known by their husbands—Mr. Edwards’ wife, Mr. Penner’s wife, Mrs. Fender was the
dean’s wife. They didn’t seem to have any particular role. Well, they looked after their
family. They weren’t encouraged until after, then they started hiring the ladies for
different jobs.
Selma Penner was very typical. I would say both her and Irene Fender were typical
Mennonite wives. Just quiet supporters of their husbands, and didn’t really have too
much to say, until their husbands were gone and then their personalities came out. But
they weren’t so quiet that they were put down, they just were there supporting their
husbands.
The school wouldn’t let you work as a wife there for awhile. Later, Esther was in the
Alumni office. I think she got me in there to help, because she had too much work to do,
writing receipts and answering letters. I think it was her that asked me if I would help.
The kids used to come into our homes once or twice a year. They would divide the
whole student body up and send them to homes on a Friday night for a time of
fellowship and food, and we got to know a lot of the kids that way, but then when the
kids got a little more affluent and they had their own cars then they did their own thing,
get into town and have a sundae or have a piece of pie or something. Coming to our
homes wasn’t the same novelty that it was when the school was smaller. So that was
discontinued, which was too bad, because in a lot of cases if you didn’t work you didn’t
get to know the students unless you had them in your home. And unless you had a
contact you really didn’t get to know them.
When we were first married we were in the hanger, and then we moved up where
the guest rooms were, and we lived in there in that old shed type of a building. It was
right by the store.35 And the kids used to come in our front door and out the back door,
or out the front door, whatever it was, from the store. They’d come in for coffee and we
got to know a lot of the kids that way. One or two would know us and they’d bring
somebody else with them and they’d bring somebody else and then they’d bring
somebody else. When we lived there we had a lot of kids that just came and went. Then
we moved and we got out of the traffic line, and that didn’t happen any more.
I think in a different way the families had influence on the students, but when
they’re more independent and they can get out and do their own thing, they don’t have
35
The store is now the recording studio.
that same contact with the staff homes. Now there are more wives working, and so they
get to have some association with the students. I know our Laurel got to know a number
of kids; well, their house is open house anyhow.
I think there is more in-school-ministry and the wives have a bigger part now. Well,
there was a different type of influence. It was just in our homes, where now it’s outside.
If you want you can take them down to the service station,36 which we didn’t have. You
can take them out for a meal, you can do things like that, which the wives are too busy to
do it in their homes, perhaps, and maybe in a sense they don’t get to see the family life. So
there’s pros and cons to it, I think.
Provision and Security
At the time when they wouldn’t let you work as a wife, I think it was just the
mentality then that the wives were to be in the home, which isn’t as prevalent now as it
was then. I think that was basically it, that you had your family to look after. I do think,
in a sense, the children do suffer when both parents are working full-time, but now with
the economy like it is you almost have to.
We made $110 a month when we were first married and made $50 when we were
single, but we got free lodging. We got 30% at the store, and we got a lot of our
vegetables from the root cellar and the garden. When we started to pay income tax on all
our benefits, our salary was raised and the rent taken off our salary.
It was amazing the way things happened after we got compensation. It was Ted
Bergren, Doug’s dad, that got a lot of these things going. Just after they got compensation
one of the men fell and hit his head and was in a coma for a week or two and died, but
36
Now known as the Pilgrim Centre.
they had the compensation, so his wife wasn’t left without anything. Another one was
the Group Insurance, I think it was. One of our men, one of the teachers had cancer and
died, and they had an insurance premium or whatever they call it, so that the family got
assistance.
There was no pension in the early days. When they did get started on a pension,
those that had worked previously didn’t have that much when they retired. Mr.
Archibald gave the school a farm and they sold it and put the money into a pension fund
for those who had worked way back. For those that were still working then, they added
a little, but the ones that started early got the bulk of that, so it gave everybody a pension
fund. Then the rest have worked on it from then. It was just amazing the way the Lord
worked things out.
Before the new trans-Canada highway went through, we used to be snowbound, or
you’d have to wait. Gordon used to have to go out to Caron and meet the buses,
especially at conference time when people were coming or when the students were
coming, and he’d go out to Caron. The bus stop was not in the town, it was sort of on a
road at the edge of town. If he happened to shut his eyes for a minute, because sometimes
it was in the middle of the night, he’d never know whether the bus had gone through or
not. I don’t think he ever missed anybody, but it was always that thought, “Oh dear, did
the bus go through and I was asleep?” And many a time it was just so heavy with snow
and blizzards and everything. Well, they put in the new highway. They were going to
put it on the other side of Caron, but they put it where we are, so it’s right on our
doorstep.
It’s just so many things that the Lord worked out, and it just made it so different.
The bus stops right at the door now. And the mail is brought in. It didn’t used to be; you
used to have to go down to the train station and get the mail from the train. You had to
be there, and if you missed it, it went to Moose Jaw and you had to go into Moose Jaw to
get it.
I’m just very thankful for the opportunity of serving at Briercrest. We never ever felt
that we were sacrificing. People would talk about this big sacrifice you’re making, but
we never ever felt that. We felt it was a privilege to serve the Lord there. Our needs were
met and they’re still being met.
It was—well, really thrilling the way the Lord led us into building a house there on
Cedar Crescent. We put orange carpet in that house. At the time that was all the thing,
but our kids didn’t like it! They talked about it later. I don’t recall when we first moved
in, but they talked about it later. When we moved then we were able to sell it at a price
that enabled us to move out here and we were able to get this and buy some new
furniture. We bought our living room suite, but the table and chairs and our bedroom
suite was all we brought with us. And with the money from selling the house we were
able to pay for this place and buy furniture, because this was only $40,000. The fellow
that built these places built them for Christian workers and pastors and missionaries
that wouldn’t have a lot of money to buy. It’s a society and when we came in we put that
$40,000 in. And you don’t sell it, you just get that $40,000 back; you don’t make
anything on it. But we only pay $100 a month for maintenance fees, and that includes our
heat and everything. Isn’t that great? That’s another thing the Lord did for us.
If you’re over 65 your taxes are $100 a year. People say, how can you afford to live out
there? We can’t afford to not to live here. It’s not just Christians in here. You know, there
are others in here, but that’s what he had in mind. You can’t advertise it that way, but
word of mouth gets around. It’s for 55 or over. Some of the people in here still work.
We just felt that God had once again provided. We had people when we first started
working at Briercrest, saying, “Well, what are you gonna do when you retire? Where’s
your security? Where’s this, where’s that?” You know. But we figured if the Lord wanted
us there he’d look after that, and he has!
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Preface
Initially I had conceived this chapter as a comparison of themes from the women’s
narratives with themes from Henry Hildebrand’s memoirs. In fact, I had written the
entire chapter, eighteen pages long, but it felt like I was trying too hard to prove a point.
So I went back to chapter four, listed twelve major themes, and began colour-coding the
narratives accordingly: (1) the ideal wife/marriage/weddings, (2) buildings/facilities, (3)
homes/homemaking, (4) domestic arts: sewing, knitting, food preparation, cleaning, (5)
work/women’s work: paid and unpaid, (6) children: bearing and rearing, (7) voice:
speaking out/keeping silent, (8) education, (9) worldly goods/money, (10)
faith/beliefs/fundamentalism, (11) leadership: political and community, (12)
relationships/friendships.
With this approach, I began to see how the women’s stories could speak
independently and that they need to be understood on their own terms before setting
them alongside accounts of “The Men God Uses In Building Briercrest Bible Institute.” 1
This is not to exclude men; we have already established that men’s voices have been
Subtitle to Bernard and Marjorie Palmer’s fictionalized book, Beacon on the Prairies (Caronport, SK:
Briercrest Bible Institute, 1970).
1
110
predominent in telling the story of Briercrest and women’s voices need to be brought
forward. Comparison is a later project.
With the perspective that scholarship is a spiritual discipline, I then took each
woman to the Lord in prayer and let Him speak to me about her. After “meditating” on
each woman’s story, I arranged this chapter chronologically to parallel chapter 4, chose
five themes (marriage, children, work, worldly goods, and voice), and explicated at least
three for each woman. I note the theme’s significance in the woman’s life and touch on
two or three examples from her narrative. Secondary and other primary sources are
tantalizing, even useful, but I deliberately limit them to emphasize the women’s voices. I
also purposed to avoid “preaching” about my pet themes in making recommendations
and drawing conclusions. Though I do bring myself to the conversation, I come first and
foremost as a listener, so must withhold my biases and restrain my own voice, training
the ears of my heart and mind to listen again and again to the women’s voices in the
autobiographical texts I co-created, thus helping others to listen as well.
Jean Rhode Mahn (nee Whittaker)
Worldly goods
Jean Mahn’s narrative leaves the reader with an impression of materialism, but it is
actually the story of reversed fortunes. Given membership in the United Church,
influenced by her father’s sympathy towards Catholics, “saved” through Lloyd Hunter,
founder of the Canadian Sunday School Mission,2 and involved in the founding of the
“fundamentalist” college, Jean went on to a life of and in education, achieving a Master’s
degree and holding teaching and administrative positions in several American post2
Palmer, Miracle, 20-21.
secondary schools. All the things she suffered and sacrificed by someone else’s choosing
were returned to her and multiplied. Her father could have been a millionaire, but gave it
all away to the school; later in life she would associate with millionaires, even naming
one as a best friend. Denied a bicycle in her teens, she flew on the Concord in her
seventies. From cleaning up the Yale Hotel in the 1930s and working into her 50s to
support herself and supplement her parents’ pension, to marrying for the first time at 53
to a husband who “did not want me to work.” From giving up her bed for countless
guests in her teens, to being “able to stay at the Waldorf Astoria any time, any weekend”
because of her first husband’s job. Both husbands took care of her and helped to provide
for her parents. Jean Mahn’s life is a great reversal: closed and “governed” at first, but ever
expanding, giving her “so much to be thankful for.”
Jean seems to view her parents as victims, lamenting that “they literally gave their all
and died poor in this world’s goods.” Three other times she comments on this: (1) “My
mother died poor by material standards but rich in soul”; (2) “My mother . . . sacrificed
many of life’s material pleasures to see the growth [of the college]”; and (3) “The more I
think about that the more I feel it was a sad, sad situation for my father to give all his
money and then not have enough to live on, or to educate my brother and me.”
Jean Whittaker’s father sank his “fortune” into the school and, unfortunately, it was
not the parents’ sacrifice alone but the children’s as well. “When I think what my father
gave up,” she says, adding, “what I gave up” (emphasis hers), she makes clear the
injustices of her past. Her father experienced business success during the Great
Depression and “would have been a millionaire if he hadn’t given it all to the Bible
school.” Speaking as a woman, twice married to men of status and means (a Wall Street
lawyer and a university faculty member), Mrs. Mahn highlights the good friends who
have surrounded her and the “privileges” she has had, including extensive travel,
beautiful homes, and close association with multi-millionaires. Her contrast between the
life she has led and the sacrifices of Briercrest is dramatic and intentional.
Jean Whittaker clearly longed for more of her father’s generosity to be directed at
her. “As his daughter, I know he gave his farms, his businesses, his insurance policies, his
bank accounts, all his financial resources—and I’ll give you this, too: he used to say, ‘We
save to give.’” She adds, “I remember wanting a bicycle so much as I learned to ride on a
neighbour’s bike, but the Bible school came first. It was only in reading Mr. Hildebrand’s
book that I learned that my father gave him a 1927 Chevrolet.”
Hildebrand does include the car in his memoirs. He married Inger in August of 1937
and he writes,
Back in Winnipeg, we packed our belongings into a 1927 Chevrolet that Mr.
Whittaker had donated to the cause. This car served us well and took us over
the dusty roads to Regina and Briercrest. The year 1937 was the driest year of
the great depression, and Inger had her first look at the dust-bowl of
Saskatchewan.3
The car was probably not Hildebrand’s to keep for himself. With the early school
functioning much like a commune, personal ownership of large items was rare and use
was shared, as Esther Edwards remembers,
We used the school cars to get to Moose Jaw. We didn’t have a car of our own.
How could you afford a car on a hundred dollars a month? . . . We had to pay to
rent them, too: two dollars every time we took it to Moose Jaw, if we wanted to
go to the doctor or something.
Thus, it is likely that the 1927 Chev was merely loaned or even rented for the Manitoba
trip. Even so, the expense of “donating” a car (whether by gift, loan, or rental) would be
significant compared with buying a bicycle for one’s daughter. However, a bicycle could
3
Henry Hildebrand, In His Loving Service, 74-75.
have seemed frivolous and unnecessary, particularly during the Great Depression when
money was tight.4
Marriage
Unlike the other participants in this study, Jean Whittaker neither came to nor
stayed in Briercrest because of a husband. In fact, she did not marry until she was 53 and
has been twice-widowed. At least two other men had proposed before that—one
boyfriend from Wheaton and another from Eastern.
Jean had always tried to follow her father’s advice: “‘Anytime you go to a strange
city, be sure to take a bus trip if you can,’ which I did.” This is how she met her second
husband, “Bob Mahn, the man I married twenty years later.” She met her first husband
through similar happenstance: “a stranger . . . very kindly invited me to share his taxi
when I was stranded due to a snowstorm at La Guardia airport. [At Le Moal Restaurant
in New York City], Henry David, a Jewish gentleman related to the Gimbels, introduced
me to his lawyer, Tom Rhode, whom I later married.” Clearly Jean has basked in the
companionship and privileges that came with both of her marriages, though she did
remain quite independent, refusing to cancel a lunch date when Bob Mahn came from the
States to visit her in Moose Jaw, then putting off marriage to him until after a preplanned trip on the Concord to the British Isles.
In spite of marrying so late in life, Jean’s husbands occupy a prominent place in her
narrative. During her single years, Jean did some things she had always dreamed off, like
learning to dance, but it was after she married that she really began to have “an exciting
Bruce Guenther, “Populism, Politics and Christianity in Western Canada,” Historical Papers: Canadian
Society of Church History (2000): 93-112 [cited 08 March 2007]. Available at
http://www.mbseminary.edu/files/download/guenther2.pdf?file_id=12815190.
4
life.” Near the end of her interview, Jean told me, “I have a lot to be thankful for, that I
had such good friends and I don’t suppose anyone’s had the privileges that I’ve had in my
later life.” Indeed, few people do experience such dramatic shift in a lifetime.
Esther Edwards
Work and Marriage
Esther began at Briercrest as a single student and stopped working after getting
married: “We women went to Bible school before we were married, then we stayed home
and looked after our babies and our husbands.” However, staying home after marriage
was not a choice. Esther notes that the school “didn’t want married women to work”
citing Mrs. Hildebrand as the model,
and so everybody was to follow her lead. Once my husband said to me after
something I had done . . ., “Now Mrs. Hildebrand would never do that, would
she?” I said, “Homer, if you want Mrs. Hildebrand, you go and get her! I’m not
Mrs. Hildebrand!”
Immediately, Esther qualifies this comparison:
But Inger Hildebrand was a real lady, you know. Everything she did was just
absolutely perfect. She set the table perfectly and she cooked divinely. You
couldn’t ever find fault with anything. Her children were perfect. That’s what
made it hard for the rest of us, I think. All except Paul. He wasn’t perfect. (laughs)
But he turned out okay. He’s the principal of one of the schools in Regina. . . .
Esther may have felt that Inger set a nearly impossible standard in homemaking and
child-rearing, yet Esther’s tone during the interview was playful and she adds, “Inger was
really one of my best friends!” so we know the comments are made out of affection.
Though Esther may not have worked for the school at first, she certainly worked
hard. She and Selma worked for Bob McLeod, painting houses and the insides of the
chapel and the motel. Esther worked for Whittaker at one point, which was quite
memorable for her: “I thought I’d never live through the day. . . . Luckily after that first
day they called me over to the office. I did something else, so I got out of that work.”
Esther spent time in the high school as a typing teacher, and taught a private typing
class in evenings. Later she became the Alumni Secretary, “just part time—for about a
year just before we left for Regina in 1967. I worked for 40 cents an hour. . . . I answered
all the letters and receipted all the donations. Lillian Diggins was alumni secretary after
me.”
Worldly Goods
While the school was closed to married women working, Esther took a job in Moose
Jaw for a year in the early 1960s, “because the kids wanted a horse.” Ironically, Esther had
to rent a school car to do this.
Esther’s memories of her homes at Briercrest and Caronport are very vivid and
unfavourable. Their first home in Briercrest was an “awful apartment with an awful lot of
work to do on painting and scrubbing and sanding floors and building cupboards, so
that took a lot of time.” With the school’s move to Caronport in 1946, “it was to fix up
another apartment all over again. We were living in an officers’ quarters, but it wasn’t
very wonderful.” The staff lived in army-built H-huts where, instead of apartments,
families were given “rooms” and all families shared common bathrooms. Later, the
Edwards were able build a house but Esther recalls that as a disastrous experience:
“They used us for guinea pigs, I think! . . . Oh, I did so many things with that house, I just
get sick every time I think of it. . . . Oh it was a terrible summer.”
In 1967, Homer and Esther “moved to Regina, where my husband was pastor of a
Baptist church.” Her relief is evident when Esther notes, “They were very good to us.
Built us a big parsonage, 2000 square feet. Used to take Donna and me all Saturday
morning to clean it.”
Selma Penner
Work
As mentioned above, Selma and Esther worked together painting for Bob McLeod.
Esther remembers, “He said he has to pay Selma more because she works harder and
faster, which was true.” Selma cleaned dormitories in the summer and also worked in the
school kitchen and at the lunch counter (restaurant):
and I took Claire along [to the school kitchen]. She was maybe two, and she
would sleep under one of the open shelves there. I had to come in at lunch for
her lunch and for her nap. I also worked at the lunch counter quite a bit. And I
would go to three farms and do day work. All in one day.
No wonder Bob McLeod felt compelled to pay Selma more than Esther!
Selma’s husband Harry appears equally industrious. He worked with Homer
establishing the dairy. Later he went into printing in the school print shop, he made
corsages for weddings, and he did much of the landscaping at Caronport, planting many
of the trees.
Selma reminded Esther that they cooked together at Arlington Beach, noting, “We
had to take the food with us.” Apparently the Beach was such a challenge that Esther
exclaimed, “Don’t even talk about it. It just makes me ill every time I think about it.”
Marriage and Children
Selma Penner came to Caronport with her husband, Harry, in the fall of 1945, with
one son, Jordan. Four more children were born to them at Caronport: Vangie, Lionel,
Trevor, and Claire. With five children, this topic really got Selma talking. She tells a cute
story about Vangie’s response to Claire’s birth:
When Claire was born Vangie met Dr. Hildebrand and she said, “Oh just
another stupid brother.” Somebody had told her it was a boy. Anyway it was a
girl. Then she told Claire, “You know mother was thirty when you were born.
You could have been a mongoloid.”
This inspired a conversation about ages for child-bearing, with Esther noting that she
was thirty when her daughter was born and Joy Brygmann was thirty-six when her first
child was born. However, these appear to be exceptions; it was more common for
mothers to be younger when starting their families.
In response to Esther’s story about Caronport kids being banned from the dorms,
Selma comments, “Our kids were called Port Brats,” of which her Jordan was the first.
While the women agree that Caronport is a good place for kids to grow up, they also
recognized that it had limited opportunities. “There was no church,” says Selma, “they
just had to go to church with the students and go to Sunday School. They had no young
people’s group that they could really be a part of.” Port kids typically went to the gym or
the rink for entertainment.
Irene Fender
Marriage and Children
Like Selma, Irene went to Caronport because of her husband, and not because of
previous ties as a student. Also like Selma, Irene appeared to be a “typical Mennonite
wife.” Regarding the invitation to move to Caronport, Bernard and Marjorie Palmer
depict Irene as very involved in the decision. Irene contradicts this saying, “I thought,
well, the decision would have to be his. The best thing to do was to go and talk to him
about it.” Though “Walter really was a farmer,” the invitation to Caronport seemed like
“an answer to our prayers concerning our children going to school.” Walter worked as
Dean of Men for twenty-five years, often joking that at work he was Dean of Men, but at
home he was Dean of Women, because they had three daughters.
Irene recalls her time at Caronport very fondly. She admits it was not always easy,
yet neither too hard. “I enjoyed it so much. I just loved it, just being a mother there . . .
and just being part of the staff, the ladies, and things like that. Anyway, it was a good life.
A very good life. I enjoyed it.” She was fulfilled with the ordinary roles assigned to
women.
Work
Irene confirmed the school’s position on not hiring married women.
Mr. Hildebrand was against that, I think. If you look back at the yearbooks, I
don’t think you’ll see any married women. . . . I don’t think they hired married
women as such until they would have them come on staff if their husbands were
there first. A lot of the staff were married men and that’s how married women
came in. There were some of the married women that thought, “Well, why can’t
we do something?” But I know for a long time Mr. Hildebrand wanted the women
to stay home and tend to their families. He liked to see the mothers with the
children in the home. That was their first responsibility. And that was important
in that time, too.
Staying home with her family was Irene’s priority, “until I started working at that lunch
counter.” This was not her initiative: she was invited to work there. “It got so busy down
there that they needed help.” In addition to waitressing, she served as manager for a
couple of years.
I really didn’t work full-time until my youngest daughter Margie was in grade
eight. When they asked me to manage it I said, “Well, I wouldn’t mind managing
it, but I still have a daughter at home,” and I wanted her to feel free to be with me
whenever she wanted to. And every day she’d come down to the lunch counter,
be there for a little while, and then she’d go home. As long as she saw mom, I
guess. But I was usually home in time for supper. Yeah, I made the meals.
So family and household were the priorities, and even when working full-time, Irene
maintained her prescribed womanly roles.
Lillian Diggins
Marriage
Regarding a woman’s identity, Lillian notes that a married woman was typically
defined by her husband. “I was the plumber’s wife. . . . You were sort of your husband’s
mate, and that was who you were known as, more or less. . . . I think most of the wives
were known by their husbands . . . . They didn’t seem to have any particular role. Well,
they looked after their family.” Lillian is an alumna of the school and had worked there in
her own right, but after marrying, her husband’s role overshadowed those
accomplishments.
Lillian and Gordon met at Briercrest and were able to have an open courtship, in
contrast to Esther and Homer Edwards about thirteen years earlier. Gordon’s first year at
school was momentous as the first that students were allowed to go on a date!
The Diggins lived in the hangar when they were first married. It had apartments
along the east and west sides, but “no washrooms in the apartments.” Instead, residents
used common washrooms “on the other side of the skating rink,” with big barrels and
cats and bats along the path.
Work
Like Esther, Lillian also stopped working soon after getting married, though she
continued working for approximately one year after marrying. She comments, “The
school wouldn’t let you work as a wife there for awhile” and “I think Dr. Hildebrand kept
his staff longer when they did get married.” Throughout her marriage, Lillian worked,
but initially it was home-based, such as censoring books for the bookstore or marking
papers. She comments further on the restrictions on wives,
I think it was just the mentality then that the wives were to be in the home,
which isn’t as prevalent now as it was then. I think that was basically it, that you
had your family to look after. I do think, in a sense, the children do suffer when
both parents are working full-time, but now with the economy like it is you
almost have to.
Once her youngest, Paul, was in school, she worked in the office part-time, arranging
her hours to be available to her children. She worked in the high school for a few years,
but eventually Esther got Lillian in to help at the Alumni office, where Lillian spent most
of her working years. “They used to call me ‘Miss Alumni’,” she says, “because I was
always looking for lots of alumni.” It seems like an ideal situation, to be able to pursue
work that one loves and still be able to care well for one’s family.
Lillian speaks in more detail than the other participants about the work of other
women. Joy Brygmann was a teacher in the elementary school. Jean Barsness was a
teacher in the college; “The students just loved Jean to bits.” Loretta (Hindmarsh)
Edwards “was a real hell-fire preacher” who went with her husband as missionaries to
Aruba. Grace Bergren was “a very sweet lady” who “worked at the lunch counter,” which
surprised everyone “because she seemed so quiet.”
Worldly Goods: Provision
The word “provision” suits Lillian’s tone. She and Gordon express immense
gratitude for the Lord’s provision throughout the years: adequate salaries, discounts,
donated vegetables, homes. She marvels at the timing of the school introducing a
compensation plan, and admires how the school set up pensions for the people who had
worked at the school before the pension plan. The trans-Canada highway and the post-
office right in Caronport are two other significant developments. She also recounts how
the Lord has provided for them in recent years.
We had people when we first started working at Briercrest, saying, “Well, what
are you gonna do when you retire? Where’s your security? Where’s this, where’s
that?” You know. But we figured if the Lord wanted us there he’d look after that,
and he has!
The present and past are bound up together. Living fairly simply, Lillian and Gordon
regularly notice the hand of God in their lives.
Voice
While I have listed “voice” as a theme, it is not a category that might occur to the
women who participated in this project. By “voice” I mean a person’s capacity to speak
out for herself or for others. In this way, voice also involves the awareness of one’s agency
in the world, the ability to effect change. Three of the women have particularly strong
voices: Jean, Esther, and Lillian.
Jean Mahn’s narrative is probably the most vivid, yielding copious themes (though
not necessarily the best writing). I met with her nearly eight months after the first set of
interviews, so was more prepared and more seasoned by then. Also, rather than just two
to four hours over coffee or a meal, we had nearly 24 hours together as I stayed overnight
in her home, met her caregivers and a friend, and toured her town.
Jean is very interested in historical records, referring often to her late husband Bob’s
archival work at the University of Ohio. She used our time very intentionally to provide
me with as much material as possible to support my research: letters, newspaper
clippings, other writings, and pictures. It was as if she had been waiting for an
autobiographer to help set the record straight.
As a teenager, Jean felt stifled by the “fundamentalist” mindset of Briercrest where
“your thinking was pretty well governed; you had to think a certain way and I could
never do that. I used to keep a diary but I’ve thrown most of those away.” She says, “I’d
never talk to Mrs. Sanderson and Mrs. Hillson about my thinking because I just knew it
would be a problem, and you learn what you have to do to have friends” and admits, “I
didn’t dream about the Bible school. I just wanted to get an education.” Rather than
voice her opinions at the time, she found a way to leave: Wheaton College.
While Jean describes her parents as “very open” in the midst of strong prejudices
against Catholics and the United Church, she also suggests that they did not feel free to
voice certain other things. For example, after a hurtful public encounter with Henry
Hildebrand regarding money, Whittaker “resigned the next morning but didn’t say
why.” Jean allows that her father “didn’t want to hurt Hildebrand or the school,” but
insists that
now it’s got to be known. Making it known would be a real tribute, because it’s
so far in the past. Hildebrand deserves a lot of credit for bringing the school to
the excellent place it is, but early publications state that Hildebrand was the
president from the beginning and he was not.5
Until his death, her father
always lauded the school, never once spoke anything but good. My parents
lived on the old age pension and what I could send them. That can’t help but
make you sad, especially when Hildebrand was given all the credit, and I felt he
didn’t deserve it, but my father just wouldn’t speak up.
Jean suspects that her mother “was more hurt” by suffering and sacrifice because she was
a woman. “She kept it to herself, but I could just tell. She did express herself somewhat,
but I knew that it wasn’t easy for her, because of the things that she sort of expected as a
During our interview, Jean actually commissioned me to publish this historical revision, saying, “It
should be known. And it would be good if you could do that, Colleen.”
5
wife of an MLA.” Whittaker had been an MLA for five years, 1929-1934, as well as a
successful merchant. There certainly would have been disparity between the
circumstances of founding a Bible Institute and the prestige and comfort of being the
wife of an MLA and successful businessman. If he hadn’t disappointed his wife’s
expectations, he certainly had disappointed the expectations of his teen-age daughter.
Looking back, Jean expresses profound sadness over her early life. Transcribing the
interview, I sensed I was hearing a 17-year-old’s voice in an 87-year-old body. At 17, Jean
Whittaker was resigned to her lot in life. At 87, Jean Mahn was breaking silences.
Esther’s temperament is lively, talkative and surprisingly direct. This makes two
moments in her narrative seem uncharacteristic. Once, while her family was living in an
H-hut, the school
sent a fellow up there they just took off the street! Homer was away (he was
away most of the summer with the quartet or a music group and I was alone). I
was scared stiff! I didn’t have any locks on the doors. I should have gone over to
that office and blasted them, but I didn’t. And I managed to live without being
molested.
Why did Esther not complain or at least mention this to someone? In hindsight she
might have “blasted them,” but at the time she was young and, as she says, “scared stiff!”
The other curious incident involved her daughter and an unreasonable teacher.
To this day Donna says, “Why didn’t you go after him?” . . . Well, I told
Donna the reason why I didn’t go after the teacher was because there was a lady
on ‘Port that was on the phone to the teacher with any little thing, complaining,
and I said didn’t want to be like her. So I said I just thought we’d just take it and
shut up.
It seems strange that such a feisty woman would “shut up” rather than speak up on
behalf of her own children. However, the silence seemed to go both ways: “Don’t ask me
why they didn’t want Port kids visiting dorm kids. I don’t know. Nobody gave a reason.”
Don’t ask, don’t tell seems to have been a standard approach to difficulties.
In editing Esther and Selma’s transcript, I often combined their comments for better
flow. Unfortunately, it appears that I may have given too much of the voice to Esther and
not enough to Selma. Esther had recommended interviewing her together with Selma,
because Selma is quiet and she wasn’t sure how much Selma would have to say. Lillian
Diggins observes,
Selma Penner was very typical. I would say both her and Irene Fender were
typical Mennonite wives. Just quiet supporters of their husbands, and didn’t
really have too much to say, until their husbands were gone and then their
personalities came out. But they weren’t so quiet that they were put down, they
just were there supporting their husbands.
Despite this perception, Selma and Esther played off each other during the interview,
with Selma contributing a strong voice and a vibrant memory. Apparently, the presence
of a life-long friend relaxed Selma’s inhibitions.
Like Selma, Irene’s voice seemed quite strong in our interview. Books were excellent
prompts for her memory. We started with a passage from Beacon on the Prairie. At the end
of our time together, she pulled out most of her yearbooks, browsing through many and
musing aloud about old friends and colleagues.
Irene speaks of advising her husband on his work as Dean of Men: “I said to him
once, ‘Always give the kids a second chance.’ And I think that stuck with him for a long
time, because he wasn’t impossible with the kids, you know.” In comparing Walter with
his female counterpart, Irene believes Erna Neufeld was too strict, but struggles with
expressing it.
I don’t know—I don’t want to be critical—but she was hard on the girls we
figured, her rules in the dorm, and things like that. I want to be careful what I say.
But she sure hung in there for a good many years. She was there a long time.
While honest, this is a cautious assessment, ending positively, admiring Erna’s tenacity.
Clearly, Irene values gentle communication, while using her voice for influence.
Was it a problem for Selma and Irene to quietly support their husbands, with more
outgoing personalities emerging only after their husbands were gone? The answer
depends on one’s historical-religious context and perspective. It is tempting to project
the present on the past, projections that are not necessarily feminist,6 but contain
assumptions about opportunities, roles, and responsibilities that Western women in the
early 21st century take for granted. However, in the first half of the 20th century,
especially around the time of Briercrest’s founding, as Esther Edwards put it, “that’s the
way it was.” Why contest something that just is?
Lillian introduced a fascinating component that did not appear in the other
conversations: preaching. For several years, every Briercrest student had to preach.
You had to tell a story first year,7 second year you had to preach in class, and third
year you had to preach in chapel. I would think it would have been pretty close to
the ‘60s before they stopped. I imagine they wouldn’t have enough time to get
everybody in.8 It wasn’t just the men that had to preach, we had to, too.
Lillian can still remember her topic: “the donkey that the Lord rode. And submissiveness
and being willing to let God use you.” Lillian mentions Loretta Edwards (nee
Hindmarsh) as “a real hell-fire preacher,” even linking this with a story about a kerosene
fridge exploding during one of her sermons, an ironic if not intentional juxtaposition.
Loretta’s voice seems to be exceptional.
6 Kim Glombisky and Derina Holtzhausen, “‘Pioneering women’ and ‘founding mothers’: women’s
history and projecting feminism onto the past,” Women and Language (Fall 2005, v28 i2 p12(11)).
7 GORDON: And then somewhere on the line you gave your testimony over the radio. Well, the boys
did, anyway. LILLIAN: I don’t remember that.
8 GORDON:
I think even just after our day some of the fellows didn’t have to preach because they run
[sic.] out of time. In those days there were a lot of missionaries came, and they used to take a lot of the
chapel services, too.
Lillian recalls the first women’s meeting she attended after getting married.
Appointed secretary, she was confused about their names. When she admitted this, the
older women admonished that she would just have to get to know them on a first-name
basis. Here is an example of voice changing as a woman enters a new season of life—
drawn into a new circle and new ways of speaking with other women.
In naming memorable women, Lillian says, “I spent many hours in Esther Edwards’
kitchen talking to her.” This sentence evokes a warm and homey feeling, highlighting the
hospitality for which Esther was famous, providing a picture of an older woman teaching
a younger woman as per Titus 2, and, more simply, the company of women conversing
over a cup of coffee or tea. The voices featured here may often have been soft and
supportive, rather than assertive and public, yet they all display strength of character.
Reflection on the Method
The serendipity of this project’s beginnings amazes me. It started with a longing to
understand the history of Briercrest women, an opportunity to meet some of the original
women, and an encouraging friend who pushed me to start. Ready or not, here I come! Of
course I could have channeled the research in popular directions if it had not been
accepted as academically appropriate, but doing it as a thesis was the perfect incubator
for my research skills. It was a relief to discover that intuition and opportunism are
recognized as valid qualitative research tools.9 Closely related is responsiveness, the
researcher’s ability to follow the interviewee’s flow rather than rigidly directing the
discussion.10 As I grew in knowledge about the craft of oral history, I learned ways to
9
Marshall and Rossman, 43 and 78.
10
See page 35 in this thesis.
prepare for and deepen the research. Even so, intuition, opportunism, and responsiveness
remain key, especially when working with elderly conversation partners.
I have emerged with a sense of wonder at being entrusted with precious memories,
living connections to history that enriches the particular story of Briercrest and the
wider stories of women in Saskatchewan and Canada. I have not merely gathered facts, I
have explored depths of meaning. David Goa sees fact-finding as a false aim for our
qualitative work, with seeking to understand meaning as our true goal. He disparages
oral history as a method that neutralizes the researcher and advocates “the art of
conversation” as “a way of understanding the meaning of an event for the person with
whom we are talking. Oral history pretended to do what documents do, and thus
destroyed the purpose of conversation.”11
In reading Goa’s manuscript after completing this thesis, I recognize an affinity with
his perspective. I never want a clinical approach to my interviewees. In fact, I do not
want interviewees at all; I want relationships with conversation partners.
This dialogue is not an interview. We are not trying to enter in order to view.
Rather we are opening up a conversation in order to understand both the fields
of meaning of the other and our own fields of meaning. The lead in this
conversation is always in the hands of our companion.12
Dr. Hildebrand was the lead in our conversation, but he did not approach it with
transparency. It would have been better to take Po Bronson’s approach:
When communication slows down – when the data rate slows down – we can feel
more. In fact, it was my practice to go over the same material repeatedly, often
forcing a source to retell the story five to eight times, until he had lost track of his
11
Goa, 44.
12
Ibid., 105.
codified “safe” version and was spilling out untapped remembrances that made him
feel it all again.13
But Bronson’s approach takes time. In collecting future oral histories, I will plan for more
time in person with the participants, divided over two or more days if possible. I would
also spend more time afterwards just listening to the audio-recorded interview and
following up by phone.
I would also follow Bronson’s example by allowing myself an integral place in the
stories, rather than trying to remove myself from them. David Goa writes of losing “the
hermetic self,”14 that idea that individuals are isolated islands, sealed off from and
inaccessible to one another. We need to recognize how much we touch and influence one
another. In trying to live the myth of objectivity, I wonder if I’ve made my women say
things they would not actually have said. In the future I can let my own voice remain in
the conversation, in the interplay of our beings.
Some people have suggested that I retained too much content from the interviews in
the women's narratives, too much talk about the women's children or too much about
Jean Mahn's life beyond Briercrest. If I had been writing for a popular audience or a
periodical, there would be too much content. However, for the academic record I
intentionally kept in most of the content, rearranging for flow, and adjusting some
repetition and style. I wanted the narratives to show the range and frequency of the
women's concerns. Dialogue about children demonstrates how all-consuming this was in
the lives of women expected to stay home with their young. Jean's recollections about
husbands and travel stand conspicuously against her early life and her parents' lives.
Po Bronson, “The Cook’s Story” in Why Do I Love These People? [cited 20 August 2007] Available at
http://www.pobronson.com/The%20Cooks%20Story.pdf. Page 5.
13
14
Goa, 46.
Never mind comparisons to previously written texts: the internal dialogue for each
woman is complex enough.
There are some technicalities that could present problems for future research.
While the oral history conversation is quite a simple way to gather stories, my approach
to the ethical considerations was anything but simple. I am wiser now. I will get
permission with a signature at the first interview, and will do so in a way that honours
my conversation partner yet gives me as much latitude as possible for using the
transcript.
Finally, I leave this project less with a sense of being finished and more with a
sense of vocation for sharing these stories and for continuing to listen and tell other
stories. I have already mentioned feeling responsible to the narrators and to the
community we all share. If these stories can benefit anyone, then they must be told. If not
by me, then who?
Recommendations
The obvious extension of this thesis is to collect more oral histories, particularly
from women, but also from men. These narratives alone direct us to potential
participants; if not the original women, then their children. For example, Selma
recommended Carol Brygmann, commenting, “Her mother and dad were on Port as long
as we were.”
The narratives in this thesis could certainly bear further thematic analysis.
Current and future narratives would be enriched by historiographical research with
documents and artifacts. I love Irene Fender’s comment: “Well, there’s just so much to
remember. I’m sure that they’ve got a copy of each yearbook at Caronport. They should
have if they don’t. It’s history! You could spend hours and hours looking at those again.”
Such research could help to harmonize narratives and resolve discrepancies between
them.
It would be fascinating and instructive to compare the memories of the women with
the memories of the men. That is already possible with these narratives, though it would
be richer after more interviews. Considering the fairly sharp distinction between the
men’s and women’s spheres, I suspect that men’s memories would be more
administrative and institutional, while women’s memories might be more domestic. For
example, Dr. Hildebrand writes this of Joy Brygmann:
Joy, Odd’s wife, was the perfect complement. She was of a cheerful
countenance and served in her own right as a teacher in different classes and as
principal of our grade school. She had earned her Professional Teacher’s
Certificate at the Saskatoon Campus of the University of Saskatchewan.15
Hildebrand mentions Joy’s maiden name much later in a roll call of women who came as
singles to work for the school and later married.16 Lillian recalls Joy as “a nice person,”
“an excellent teacher,” and “a very bubbly person,” but she also feels that Joy “kind of had
her favourites in the elementary school,” recounting Joy’s relationship with Lillian’s
daughter Kathy. Esther and Selma readily provide Joy’s maiden name, Brown, and
discuss her age when she had her daughters (36 and 38). They inform us that Joy was
Dean of Women before she married and only mention that “later on she taught in the
grade school,” not noting her service as principal.
Beyond Briercrest itself, a researcher could compare accounts and experiences of
women from the early days of other Christian colleges. For example, in founding Moody
15
H. Hildebrand, 117.
16
Ibid., 200.
Bible Institute, Emma Dryer’s involvement17 has striking parallels to that of Annie
Hillson and Isabel Whittaker. One could also consider Dorothy Miller and Ruth
Dearing18 of Prairie Bible Institute.
These are a handful of possible directions for subsequent research.
Conclusions
The point of this thesis has been to collect oral histories and develop personal
narratives. While these narratives are not ready for popular publication, they do make
early women of Briercrest accessible to a new audience beyond their families. It is
outside the scope of this study to produce a definitive account; rather, this project is a
preliminary exploration into the lives of women in Briercrest College and Seminary’s
early days. While this chapter has introduced some analysis, thorough investigation
(collecting documents and artifacts as well as stories) must wait for another project.
The main question driving this thesis is, "What were the experiences of women in
the early days of Briercrest?"19 The narratives in this thesis include discussions of sewing,
cleaning, home renovation, food preparation, weddings, child bearing, and childcare.
While previous accounts by men of Briercrest allude to such themes, they do not provide
the same behind-the-scenes insight.
Cynthia L. Ogorek, “Emma Dryer,” in Women Building Chicago, 1790-1990 (2001) [cited 21 October
2004]. Available from http://centerofknownhistory.tripod.com/portfolio/dryer.html.
17
Enns and Ruth Dearing, “Prairie Bible Institute,” in Women of Aspenland: Images from Central
Alberta [database online][cited 24 July 2007]. Available from
http://www.albertasource.ca/aspenland/eng/society/article_prairie_bible.html.
18 James
Most of the narrators are over 80 years old, telling about their experiences from particular
perspectives. If I were writing for publication in a journal or magazine with a non-academic audience (e.g.,
Folklore, Faith Today, Christian Week, Passport, etc.) I would be much more selective.
19
This is only a beginning for a new appreciation of Briercrest’s origins. The stories
here bring a new perspective along with some new information. Even with further
similar research, many stories will never be heard—from women or from men. Perhaps in
these narratives, these stories, someone will “recognize that in many ways it is also”
theirs. 20 Certainly, in just these four narratives by five women, we can see the hand of
God. To know these stories is to be enriched. To lose them would deprive us of heritage.
However, knowledge of our heritage is more than a sentimental or even enriching
exercise: it can be “an act of survival.” Julia Kasdorf ponders this.
Given the importance of history, it is understandable that women must address
and even revise narratives from the past if we are to clear a public space for our own
stories. We must engage in “revision,” defined by Adrienne . . . as “the act of looking
back, of entering an old text from a new critical direction.” The old texts include the
received scripts for a woman’s life, stories of lives that came before hers, and the
narratives that structure the reality of an entire community. Sometimes these texts
come by way of scholarly research, but more often they are retrieved from
conversation and the author’s memory. The desire to revise these stories is not fueled
by mere academic interest, Rich reminds us: “more than a chapter in cultural history:
it is an act of survival.” Begun as an individual’s task, the work of revision saves the
lives of both author and community, because it increases the possible strategies for
living and interpreting experience, although for exactly these reasons such work can
be unsettling to the common order and may be perceived as a threat to family and
community values.21
Receive, revise, retrieve, revise, re-envision—all as an act of survival.
Though I am not studying or working at Caronport right now, being an alumna and
a former employee of all three schools (high school, college, seminary), I still speak as an
insider. As such, I have a hunch (call it an educated guess or woman’s intuition), that the
research begun in this thesis could be both critical and unsettling for the future of
Briercrest College and Seminary as we consider the place of women there. Hasia Diner
20
Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 30.
21
Kasdorf, 317-318.
sees her insider role as “the right and obligation to shake people out of the cloak of
comfort and self-congratulation that tends to envelop them in [public] settings.” 22 This
feels daunting, yet it is a responsibility that I will own. Briercrest is not what it used to
be and cannot go back, yet it must examine the past for “possible strategies for living and
interpreting experience.”23 In documenting conversations with women from Briercrest’s
early days, I can participate and even lead in that examination. While I am sometimes
mystified by the community practices of early Briercrest, I can also appreciate the value
of having the women “at home,” that is, occupying largely domestic realms such as caring
for husbands and children, practicing hospitality, and attending to wider community life.
Early Briercrest sought a particular balance between school and community, a balance
which appears to have been crucial in the establishment not only of a school but of an
entire town.
This thesis gives rise not only to interesting academic possibilities, it points to vital
practical concerns as well. While perhaps not valuing the same social structures as our
forebears, contemporary Briercrest must take seriously the intersection between schools
and community, between the single industry, education, and its town. Caronport exists
because of the college, therefore, both academic and civic leaders must reckon with the
symbiotic relationship between village and schools as demonstrated by history from the
women’s perspectives and, if anyone will listen, as can be heard in women’s voices today.
There is a Chinese proverb that says “women hold up half the sky.” While men are
increasingly active in home life and have privileges like paternity leave, responsibilities
Hasia R. Diner, “Insights and Blind Spots: Writing History from Inside and Outside,” in Strangers at
Home, eds. Schmidt, Kimberly D., Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Steven D. Reschly (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2002), 36.
22
23
Kasdorf, 318.
for home and community still tend to rest on women due to sheer biology: the bearing
and raising of children keeps women home more frequently and longer than most men.
Caronport is not unique in this, but transience exacerbates any difficulties in coping
with it. How can the town and the schools maintain relationship with one another while
appropriately dividing the work between them? Is it possible to depend on and/or revive
volunteerism in a town with more and more double-income families? How can the
institution think creatively about making room for women as well as men in classrooms,
offices, and kitchens, while also providing the flexibility needed to care for homes and
families?24 How will the town and the schools facilitate balance in the life of a
community where women, especially stay-at-home moms, have shrinking material
options?25 How will the leaders grapple with approximately half of the student body
being young women who have reduced access to female role models and mentors? These
are just a few questions that can be asked—and answered—through listening to women
past and present.
Is this thesis revisionist history? Perhaps. I admit trying to revise Briercrest’s official
history by raising women’s voices, balancing the institutional perspective with a more
communal view. Is this thesis feminist history? Not necessarily, though if “feminist”
means acknowledging and enjoying certain rights and freedoms that women can assume
today, then I would own a “small f.” I am calling for an emancipation of women’s voices
Rachel Nikkel (now Runnalls), “Will You Hire Me? A Report on the Status of Women Faculty at
Briercrest Bible College and Seminary” (course essay for Men and Women in Ministry Together, CM723
(Caronport, SK: Briercrest Seminary, 6 August 2003)). Two ways to allow for women’s involvement in
teaching and administration are job sharing and providing resources such as office space and admin
building keys for adjunct faculty.
24
Fraser lists the following material categories: “social status, access to health and welfare services,
income, housing, work (paid and unpaid), and involvement with counseling,” 195.
25
from the past, and for the ear of an audience of both women and men, lay people and
leaders, students and teachers. I am calling a search for social structures that foster
healthy, stable community.
Whether or not more narratives are formally collected, I hope and pray that this
thesis will challenge and inspire all who read it to become better listeners, to pay
attention to the stories of their elders and the voices of women, so to keep in touch with
“collective memory”26 and be equipped with means for understanding the past, living in
the present, and moving into the future.27
26
Sandino.
27
Kasdorf, 317.
APPENDIX A: SAMPLE PARTICIPANT LETTER
Esther Edwards
6108-221 Primrose St
Abbotsford, BC V2S 2Y9
604-851-4085
February 20, 2007
Dear Mrs. Edwards,
Thank you for inviting me to your home for an interview on November 2nd, 2004. I have
interviewed five women for my thesis to complete the Master of Arts degree at Briercrest
Seminary. The thesis topic is “Oral Histories of Women From The Early Days Of
Briercrest Bible Institute.” I have finished transcribing your interview and have written a
“personal narrative” based on the interview. Both are enclosed here. I believe that your
participation in this thesis leaves a legacy for the men and women who will follow you in
all aspects of education at Briercrest. Thank you so much for participating.
In order to use your interview and life narrative for my thesis, I need your help with the
following:
1) Please review the personal narrative and interview transcript. As you read, please
indicate any information you would like to rewrite, omit or add.
2) After you have made the corrections, please return the narrative and transcript
to me, using the Express-Post envelope provided, no later than March 5th if
possible. I will make the appropriate changes, perhaps consulting you by phone
in the process. Note: if time is an issue, please do the personal narrative first, sending it
separately, if necessary.
3) Please sign the release form. If you have serious reservations about any of the
information in your transcript or narrative, you can ask to see the desired
corrections before signing the release form. If you ask for revisions, we will repeat
steps 1 and 2 above.
If you have any pictures that might be useful for my project, I would be delighted to use
them. If so, please send them with a brief written description and/or list of any people in
the pictures. I will return them to you no later than April 15th, 2007.
When my thesis is finished, I will send the final copy of your transcript and life narrative
to you. You will receive these no later than April 15th, 2007.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me (306-883-3293). Lillian
Diggins is also prepared to offer assistance (604-854-6840).
Blessings,
Colleen Taylor
Box 339 Spiritwood, SK S0J 2M0 (306) 883-3293 poetess@sasktel.net
APPENDIX B: STATEMENTS OF RELEASE
On the following five pages are scanned copies of each Statement of Release (or
Statement of Consent) for my narrators: Jean Rhode Mahn, Esther Edwards, Selma
Penner, Irene Fender, and Lillian Diggins.
[scanned images deleted for size of download]
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Interviews
Esther Edwards and Selma Penner. Interview by Colleen Taylor, 2 November 2004. Tape
recording and transcript.
Irene Fender. Interview by Colleen Taylor, 3 November 2004. Tape recording and
transcript.
Dr. Henry Hildebrand. Interview by Colleen Taylor, 2 November 2004. Tape recording.
Lillian and Gordon Diggins. Interview by Colleen Taylor, 2 November 2004. Tape
recording and transcript.
Jean Whittaker Rhode Mahn. Interview by Colleen Taylor, 4 June 2004. Tape recording
and transcript.
Resources from the files of Dr. Henry Hildebrand
Articles
Bubna, Paul and Jean. “Evangelicals and Feminism.”
De Hahn, Richard W. “Women in the Church” in The Woman God Made. Grand Rapids, MI:
Radio Bible Class, n.d.
Sermons
“A Woman’s Place in God’s Plan,” n.d.
“A Woman’s Place in the Church,” n.d.
“A Woman’s Rightful Place in the Church,” n.d.
Jean (nee Whittaker) Mahn: Private Papers
Correspondence to Orville and Clara Swenson, November 27, 1995.
Correspondence from Dr. John Barkman, February 26, 1996.
Correspondence to Dr. John Barkman, March 17, 1996.
Correspondence to Dr. John Barkman, May 26, 1996.
Correspondence to Leona Davidson, Reunion Committee Representative, May 27, 1996.
“Pilgrim’s Progress Report,” souvenir menu. Winter/Spring 1996.
Archibald Library Archives, Caronport, SK
Briercrest Alumni Directory. Caronport, SK, 1990.
Briercrest Bible Institute
1941-1942 (prospectus)
1942-1943 (prospectus)
1944-1945 (bulletin)
1945-1946 (bulletin)
1946-1947 (bulletin)
1947-1948 (bulletin)
1949-1950 (bulletin)
1950-1951 (catalogue)
1951-1952 (catalogue)
1952-1953 (catalogue)
1953-1954 (catalogue)
1954-1955 (catalogue)
1955-1956 (catalogue)
1956-1957 (catalogue)
1957-1958 (catalogue)
1958-1959 (catalogue)
1959-1960 (catalogue)
The Echo
vol. 2, no. 6, 1944
January 1945
vol. 3, no. 13, Feb
vol. 3, no. 15, March
vol 3, no. 16, April 1945
vol. 3, no. 17, May 1945
vol. 4, no. 18, June
vol. 3, no. 19, July
vol. 3, no. 20, August 1945
vol. 3, no. 21, Sept 1945
vol. 3, no. 22, Oct 1945
vol. 3, no. 23, Nov 1945
vol. 3, no. 24, Dec 1945
vol. 4, no. 25, Jan 1946
vol. 4, no. 26, Feb 1946
vol. 4, no. 27, Mar 1946
vol. 4, no. 28 [sic]
vol. 4, no. 28 [sic], May 1946
vol. 4, no. 29, June 1946
vol. 4, no. 30, July 1946
vol. 4, no. 31, Oct 1946
vol. 4, no. 28 [sic], May 1946
vol. 4, no. 32, Nov 1946
vol. 4, no. 33, Dec 1946
vol. 5, no. 34, Jan 1947
vol. 5, no. 35, Feb 1947
vol. 5, no. 37, Apr 1947
vol. 5, no. 38, May 1947
vol. 5, no. 39 [sic], June 1947
vol. 5, no. 39 [sic], July 1947
vol. 5, no. 41, Aug 1947
vol. 5, no. 43, Oct 1947
vol. 5, no. 44, Nov 1947
vol. 5, no. 42, Sept 1947
vol. 5, no. 45, Dec 1947
Jan 1948
vol. 6, no. 47, Feb 1948
vol. 6, no. 48, Mar 1948
vol. 6, no. 49, April and May, 1948
vol. 6, no. 50, June 1948
vol. 6, no. 8, Sept 1948
October 1948
vol. 6, no. 10, Nov 1948
Edwards, Homer. Treasures of Truth. Briercrest Books: Caronport, SK, 1987.
Edwards, Homer. Treasures of Truth, vol. 2. Aldergrove, BC: Valcraft Publishing, n.d.
Fellowship Flashes, 1940-1941.